Two Saturday fishing outings with very different results

The past two Saturdays have proved several of fishing’s axioms relative to temperature, wind and angling pressure.

I launched the Ranger both days at dawn on Shenango Reservoir, just north of Sharon, and headed out with rods rigged with lures traditionally associated with late-season bass fishing. Both days, I passed a mini-armada of boats with anglers targeting crappies (more about them later in this piece).

My outfits included two rods with crankbaits (shallow- and medium-divers), one with a spinnerbait, and a fourth with a 3/8-ounce rattling jig.

The earlier Saturday produced decidedly better results, not surprising considering the conditions. It was overcast and windy, and the water temperature ranged from 58 to 61 degrees at most of my stops.

I started with the shallow crankbait, bouncing it along the rip-rap of Route 18 and the nearby launch ramp. As the sun beamed over the eastern horizon, a couple of 15-inch smallmouth bass took the shad-colored plug.

Thirty minutes later, at another rip-rap overpass, a 3-pound largemouth ate the same bait. The action continued throughout the day, with a one-hour lull around 11 a.m. when I tried to entice some strikes from a stretch of bank sporting shallow logs and stumps. When I returned to the wind-blown rocks, the bass again showed themselves.

The day ended with my score of 11 largemouths and four spunky smallmouths.

A week later, I returned to Shenango, but it was the day after a sharp cold snap. I launched the boat in the 27-degree dawn, and discovered the water temperature had plummeted to 48 degrees. Retracing my spots that had been productive the previous Saturday, I quickly learned the bass were much less willing to chase my crankbaits.

Two and a half hours passed before the first bite, which happened just as I noticed the water temp had climbed to 54 degrees. I quartered a cast across a shale point and was rewarded with a 16-inch largemouth that put up little struggle compared with the fight it would have provided even a week earlier.

The LCD screen on my bow-mounted sonar also revealed baitfish scattered throughout the water column as I eased into a shallow cut behind the shale point. In the very back of the cut, a dandy largemouth pounced on my jig when I pitched it into the opening of a culvert that drained a small pond into the reservoir.

As my day started ticking down to quitting time, the water temperature became a consistent 55 degrees and I started picking off more largemouths in obvious “fish here” locations. They were big stumps on main lake points, several of them uprooted by years of ice pressure, no doubt.

The bass were not bashful about hitting the jig as it wiggled around in the stumps’ root systems. The final fish of the day was a smallie — pushing 4 pounds — that smashed the jig the instant it sank to the sweet spot in a big stump.

Final score that day was nine largemouths and that solo smallie.

Both Saturdays underscored the importance of water temperature and current. Find the warmest water in the lake and you’ll find the bass. But find warm water moved by the wind and your score will soar.

And find time to fish on the days when others aren’t inclined to beat you to the obviously best spots, and your score will jump decidedly upward in your favor.

Now a word about those crappies I mentioned: They’re suspended around the brush and planted pallet structures in local reservoirs. The days I visited Shenango recently were productive for the crappie crowd, those with knowledge about the structure and how to entice the slabs into biting jigs hovering in the strike zone.

Good crappie fishing also is available along the U.S. 224 causeway at Berlin, particularly when a light breeze is pushing the shad toward the rocks.

jwwollitz@aol.com