October Saturdays are perfect for fishing

Sure, I could use the extra couple of hours of sleep. OK, the yard is full of leaves.

Yeah, the footballs are flying and it would be fun to tune in to the big game and sit back with a cold drink and bowl of chips.

But I’ve got a crazy itch and it needs to be scratched regularly.

So I use my Saturdays to soothe the itch by stretching my fishing season past the time when most have put their tackle away and parked their boats.

Sleep is for the night. The leaves will blow away. Football will still be on TV when the snow flurries are flying.

I hitched up the Ranger last Saturday morning and dragged it over to Shenango Reservoir. Plans today are for more of the same.

I can’t predict what today’s outing will bring, but I can report last Saturday was most definitely worth braving the chill.

A wispy mist rose from the lake’s surface as I launched an hour after dawn.

No sense pushing the start time too early, as the sun would be my friend when it climbed high enough to warm the 55-degree water and stir up the bait and the bass.

Ten minutes of topwater chugging over a likely smallmouth spot served up no takers, but the activity at least helped restore the circulation to my icy fingers.

I picked up a shallow-running crankbait and quickly tricked a 10-inch smallie lurking next to the rock off which the lure caromed.

I knew I’d do better once I started feeling the warmth of sunshine soaking into my black jacket.

It took an hour before the first keeper bit.

A 16-inch largemouth, its belly bulging with whatever it had been eating for breakfast, gobbled the crank and surged around the boat for a few moments.

The signs were starting to point in my favor.

Shenango was all mine. A few crappie anglers had launched before and after me, but it was just me and them on the entire lake.

With no urgency to bounce around to proven bass spots before others beat me to them, I fished at my own pace and enjoyed the autumn colors in the woods around the lake.

By 11 a.m., the sun was high and bright. I drove up the lake to a bank exposed to an incoming breeze.

The waves lapped over the tip-tops of black stumps revealed by the falling water. Four casts produced two more bass, both eager to eat my little shad-colored lure.

Fall, the experts say, is feeding time for predators that instinctively know they must prepare for a long winter of slim pickings.

Actively feeding fish tend to commit completely to the lure, and will get a mouthful of treble hooks.

Less-active fish, on the other hand, will nip at a moving lure and end up being lightly hooked on just one tine.

Saturday’s bass were eaters. All that I caught were hooked well, requiring needle-nose pliers to carefully extract the hooks.

One particularly aggressive fish smashed the silver-and-black bait as I wiggled it through the mass of branches at the end of a toppled tree.

The strike was vicious, as the bass blasted up on the crankbait and tried to bulldog back into the limbs.

I wrestled it to the boat and admired it for a moment after working the lure out of its mouth.

At 4 pounds, it was the best fish of the day.

It also was the perfect capper for another great fall fishing trip. Six hours, door to door, with plenty of action packed in between.

That’s an October Saturday — too precious to waste for those who have to keep their fishing itches satisfied.

jwwollitz@aol.com