For my money…Salt Fork is as good a fishery as you’ll find inland in Ohio. And crappies like this are the proof. (Photo by Author)
As good a time as you’ll find all year for big crappies, a friend and I hit the jackpot in Guernsey County, and you can, too. All you got to do is look for ‘the cove’.
By Ray Reilly for Press Pros
The phone rang last week where I was staying in Sandusky. And caller ID immediately gave me reason to answer.
“Ray-Ray, you gotta’ come to Salt Fork. I just caught a bucket full of crappies…the big ones…12 to 15 inches,” said long-time schoolmate and fishing buddy Tim Nicholson. “Got ’em in the cove. Everything is perfect.”
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To be sure, 15 inch crappies always gets Ray-Ray’s attention, and I knew immediately where they came from because Tim and I had fished that spot in Salt Fork Lake, near Cambridge, Ohio, for decades. Salt Fork, in fact, holds a soft spot in my heart because it was there that I caught the first fish in my life that wasn’t a bluegill – a bass.
It’s also where I caught my first Musky.
And yes, I’ve caught some of the biggest crappies I’ve ever seen in the cold, clean waters of Salt Fork, in Guernsey County, Ohio.
“More information?” I asked.
“Used some lime green jigs and small spinner baits,” Tim added. “Hell, I saw some kids on bicycles with big crappies they caught with bobbers and minnows…off the dock. Get down here and let’s clean up.”
“If you can go in the morning I can be there in four hours,” I said. “Any chance of you filleting some of those crappies?”
For my money Salt Fork Lake is one of the best land-locked fisheries in the state of Ohio, despite some strong arguments from those who claim the lake is too busy – too many people, boats, and too much fishing competition. And while that can be true on Memorial Day and the 4th of July, it’s a 3,000 acre body of water, in total, and many parts of the lake never see as much as a row boat or a cane pole. With multiple species of fish, it’s as good a place as I can think of to catch the best bass, bluegill, crappie, walleye, or musky of your life.
And, it’s also a body of water with a lot of the ‘coves’ that Tim Nichols spoke about, one in particular on the northeast side, fed by one of the many small tributaries that help fund Salt Fork. The shoreline there is steep, tree-lined, and mother nature over the years has provided ideal underwater cover for schooling fish with uprooted trees that find their way into eight to ten feet of water. The cove that Tim spoke of is particularly deep and cold, near spawning areas in the spring, a constant food supply for some big, big crappies, a popular variety among the local anglers.
By 7 o’clock on Sunday evening I was pulling into Cambridge on the interstate, took a familiar road northeast toward the lake, and met Tim, who lives an hour east now near Wheeling, at an agreed-upon rendezvous point. Minutes later we were checking into his rented cabin. By 8 o’clock he had a plateful of those crappies fillets fried up and served with cole slaw and french fries. By 10 o’clock the George Dickel had played out and we turned in to get an early start.
Tim’s twenty-foot Ranger boat is all tricked out and all we really needed to do come morning was tie on some of the jigs Tim had suggested and get our heading for the ‘cove’. It took about ten minutes to get positioned in a deep channel of brush-lined water that the depth finder identified as 15 feet deep. Tim’s fish finder immediately found a ‘blob’ of crappies about twenty feet off the bow. His first cast got hung in a tree branch. My first cast got hung on a thrashing crappie that tugged and pulled and did its best to find refuge in a submerged treetop.
Fishing with 4-pound test I muscled the fish my way and in less than a minute netted as pretty a ‘speck’ as you’ll ever see, and easily 12 to 14 inches.
“See, told you,” Tim smiled, now untangled and tugging on his own fish. He landed it, put it in the storage well, and was back fishing in the blink of an eye.
You hear about fishing like this, and you read fishing stories in magazines that are too good to be true. And many are. But this one’s legit. Within ten minutes we had ten fish that were all pushing 15 inches , while we turned others loose that were two-thirds that. Changing lures to a spinner grub I caught a nice bass, maybe 18 inches, and sent it on its way.
Tim changed to a different color spinner jig and immediately landed the biggest crappie of the day – 16 inches. “I always send the biggest one back home,” he laughed. “That fish has grandkids somewhere.”
Later in the day we caught some nice bluegills, but nothing to match the crappies from the cove…and I would suspect other spots like it in some out-of-the-way places have many of the same advantages. But they don’t get fished because they’re not approachable from the bank, and it takes time on that long, twisting lake to find them. Simply put, it’s easier to fish in more accessible parts of the lake.
“It’s what makes Salt Fork so special,” said Tim later on, after cleaning fish and cooking burgers on the grill. “There’s something for everyone, I guess.”
Always has been, too. At least for my money.
‘Til next time, I’ve enjoyed it….
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