JACK WOLLITZ Let the day tell you where the fish are

At long last, a weekend with hints of summer has arrived. It doesn't matter whether you're an angler, golfer, gardener or Little League parent, this spring's weather has affected your outdoor life. Everywhere people gather, and that includes the boat ramps, they are talking about the cool wet weather with grumbles in their voices.
So today we enjoy what the sky offers. And soon enough we'll be complaining again as the days roll on through the heat and humidity.
Fishermen learn the calendar can lie. Just because the page says June, doesn't mean the fish believe it.
What worked for you on June 8, 2000, won't necessarily produce the same results today. That's because the fish don't read clocks and calendars. Instead, they react by instinct to the seasons' conditions - the cold and the heat, the deluges and the droughts, the sun and the clouds.
Prefer to be
To stay in touch with your favorite species, you need to understand where they prefer to be during cool, cloudy days, as well as hot and sunny ones.
For local walleye anglers, this spring has provided a bit of a bonus, an extension of the period during which the walleyes are active in shallow water.
Anglers at Mosquito, Pymatuning and Berlin, for example, continue to find good bunches of walleyes on the shallow sand bars. A number of good-sized fish are acting like bass, lurking in flooded willow bushes in hopes of snatching a shad or two each day.
Ask Jim Guzman of North Jackson. He was flipping a jig and pig around willow trees in Berlin Reservoir last Sunday when he got a solid strike. He set the hook, wrestled out a 17-inch fish and couldn't believe his eyes.
While the walleye didn't count in his bass tournament score that day, it scored major points that evening in the skillet. The lesson this spring is a good one: Let the day tell you where to fish, not your log book. Read the conditions - water temperature and level, the wind and the sky - and make your game plan fit what you see.
Mansky makes the cut
Youngstown bass pro Dan Mansky represents a new generation of competitive fishermen who cut their tournament teeth on Lake Erie smallmouths. That experience is paying off this weekend as Mansky is one of 20 pros to survive the first round of the FLW Outdoors Everstart Northern Division tournament up on Lake Vermilion in Minnesota.
Mansky sat in 15th place entering the third day of competition, with a two-day catch of northwoods smallmouth bass weighing 27 pounds. He was just seven ounces behind former BASS Masters Classic champion Dion Hibdon of Missouri. Under the Everstart series format, the field is cut to the top 20 pros and amateurs after two days of fishing.
His accomplishment gains perspective when you consider that 180 professional anglers were on their way home Friday morning as Mansky and the other 19 pros who made the cut set out across Lake Vermilion. They were in search of smallmouth bass on the shallow spawning grounds.
He and second-place pro Vic Vatalaro, owner of Vic's Sports Center in Kent, seek to win the $50,000 top prize in the tournament. The winner will be the angler who catches the heaviest combined sacks Friday and Saturday.
Mansky and Vatalaro were among the favorites in the Minnesota smallmouth slugfest. Both are very knowledgeable smallmouth anglers, having spent countless hours working tubes and other lures over the humps and rock piles in Lake Erie.
By virtue of making the cut among some of the top bass anglers in the country, they proved the skills they earned in Ohio translate pretty well elsewhere in smallmouth bass country.
jwwollitz@aol.com