Battling green monsters
Some pretty menacing fish swim in Youngstown-area waters, but a bare handful of anglers pursue them specifically.
Fish with 20 pounds of muscle and mouths full of puppy-sharp teeth prowl the local reservoirs and Mahoning River, startling those who thought their next bites might be walleyes, crappies, bass or catfish.
Woe to the casual angler who jerks on his sinking bobber or the walleye wrangler who swings on his jig only to discover a 3- to 4-foot streak of meanness on the business end of the line.
Muskies and their northern pike cousins swim in good numbers in local waters, but only a few anglers set their sights on them. That’s a shame.
Many travel thousands of miles to the northwoods wilderness to catch pike and muskies, but Milton, West Branch and Pymatuning offer pretty good odds for anglers interested in 40-inch muskies. Mosquito Creek Reservoir has a thriving population of northern pike.
I went toe-to-fin with several green monsters in 2015 and each encounter stands out in my memory like a big bold exclamation point on a sheet of white paper.
West Branch has one of Ohio’s largest populations of muskies. Fish top 40 inches there regularly. I jammed hooks into the jaws of two of them in May while pitching soft plastic baits to the shady sides of willow clumps.
The first one was spectacular enough, but the second was worthy of a video highlight reel.
My lure slipped past the crook of a bent branch and sank out of sight. When the bait continued to glide in a direction that defied gravity, I knew I’d been bit. I jerked the flipping stick back like I’ve done thousands of times, but the resistance immediately signaled I’d hooked no ordinary bass.
A muskie of maybe 45 inches and 25 pounds blew up out of the willow like a tornado on a hot prairie. It twisted in midair and belly-flopped back into West Branch where its tail grabbed water to drive the fish in a line-ripping run.
The muskie raced from bow to transom and erupted with a cartwheel move as splendid as any tarpon jump you may have seen on TV.
The battle ended when my 20-pound fluorocarbon line split under the strain. My pulse was pounding. Any angler whose heart rate doesn’t soar in a moment like that is probably enroute to the coroner.
A few weeks later, while gurgling a buzzbait around flooded brush on the north end of Mosquito in pursuit of largemouths, a streak of lightning bolted from the cover and ate my lure. The strike was so violent that I first thought an osprey had dive-bombed my bait.
The fish charged full-bore in the direction of its strike, then made a U-turn and tried to plow back into the line of willows that had served as ambush cover. My line held and I soon enough worked the 15-pound northern pike to the side of the boat where I could grab the buzzbait with pliers and free the snaggle-toothed fish.
I’ve had similar experiences with pike at Mosquito, Presque Isle Bay and a few other nearby waters, and many encounters with muskies at Milton, Berlin, Pymatuning, Conneaut Lake and the Ohio River.
Interestingly, all of them happened while I was fishing for bass. That’s a whole bunch of bonus fun close to home, plus I saved myself a wad of time and money I’d have invested in exotic fishing trips.