Fishing heating up in Ohio

Spring is here and so is the fish­ing sea­son. The wall­eye are bit­ing up north and locally the crap­pie and bass are being taken on a reg­u­lar basis.

Nor­mally for late March, we are just now catch­ing a few fish if the weather is warm and sunny but with this crazy March we have had, Mother Nature is clearly a month ahead of sched­ule. If you haven’t got­ten out much yet, you have to fast for­ward your fish­ing meth­ods a few weeks ahead of normal.

What­ever species you try to catch this spring, please be aware of the cur­rent laws. Our state now has a lot of vari­ances in terms of min­i­mum size lim­its and daily bag lim­its for each species depend­ing on what body of water you are fish­ing so be sure to check that out before you bring any fish home.

• These record high tem­per­a­tures have the turkeys on fast for­ward as well. The birds are split up into their breed­ing groups and the toms are gob­bling and strut­ting hard. I am sure that the actu­ally breed­ing sea­son will be way ahead of sched­ule this spring if it hasn’t started already.
It could make for an unusual open­ing week for the turkey sea­son but my biggest con­cern is that if we ended pay­ing for this nice weather in May and we end up with a lot of cool and wet con­di­tions, it could make for a tough hatch. We have already had back to back sub­par hatches and we can’t afford another one. My fin­gers are crossed that this weather pat­tern holds at least near nor­mal for the rest of spring and we don’t get pay­backs in May.

• The ODNR Divi­sion of Wildlife invites anglers, hunters and trap­pers to visit www.wildohio. com to take a new online sur­vey. The online sur­vey asks fish­ing and hunt­ing license buy­ers to pro­vide feed­back on their expe­ri­ence with the newly imple­mented license sales sys­tem. Deer and turkey hunters will also be given the oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide their input on the auto­mated game-check system.

The online sur­vey is avail­able now and will run through April 30. Responses to the sur­vey are con­fi­den­tial. Infor­ma­tion pro­vided by anglers, hunters and trap­pers is impor­tant to the suc­cess­ful man­age­ment of Ohio’s wildlife resources. The Divi­sion of Wildlife encour­ages all sports­men and women to participate.

• The Ohio Depart­ment of Nat­ural Resources and the Ohio Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture announced that test­ing of Ohio’s deer herd has found no evi­dence of chronic wast­ing dis­ease for the 10th straight year.

CWD is a degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease that affects elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer. Accord­ing to ODNR’s Divi­sion of Wildlife, state and fed­eral agri­cul­ture and wildlife offi­cials col­lected 549 sam­ples last year from hunter-harvested deer from 36 coun­ties, pri­mar­ily dur­ing the deer-gun sea­son that ran Nov. 28 – Dec. 4. All CWD test­ing is per­formed at ODA’s Ani­mal Dis­ease Diag­nos­tic Laboratory.

In addi­tion to CWD, 561 of the hunter-harvested deer sam­ples were also tested for bovine tuber­cu­lo­sis. Results found no evi­dence of this dis­ease in Ohio deer as well. Addi­tional CWD sam­ples are being taken from road-killed deer, but those test results are not yet avail­able. Sam­pling will con­tinue through April.

Since 2002, ODNR’s Divi­sion of Wildlife, in con­junc­tion with the ODA’s Divi­sion of Ani­mal Indus­try and the U.S. Depart­ment of Agriculture’s Ani­mal and Plant Health Inspec­tion Ser­vice, Wildlife and Vet­eri­nary Ser­vices, has been con­duct­ing sur­veil­lance through­out the state for CWD and bovine tuberculosis.

While CWD has never been found in Ohio’s deer herd, it had been diag­nosed in wild and cap­tive deer, moose, or elk in 15 other states and two Cana­dian provinces. Since CWD was dis­cov­ered in the west­ern United States in the late 1960s, there has been no evi­dence that the dis­ease can be trans­mit­ted to humans.

ODNR’s Divi­sion of Wildlife con­tin­ues to care­fully mon­i­tor the health of Ohio’s wild deer herd through­out the year. For the lat­est infor­ma­tion on CWD, visit www.wildohio.com or the Chronic Wast­ing Dis­ease Alliance at www.cwd-info.org.

• Just a friendly reminder as you take the boat out on the local waters that Ohio law requires any­one who was born on or after Jan. 1, 1982, to show proof they have suc­cess­fully com­pleted an approved boater safety edu­ca­tion course before oper­at­ing any pow­ered water­craft greater than 10 horse­power. More than 12,000 Ohioans annu­ally com­plete an approved boat­ing safety edu­ca­tion course.

The Divi­sion of Water­craft and its boat­ing part­ners, includ­ing U.S. Power Squadrons, U.S. Coast Guard Aux­il­iary and other local com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions, together are offer­ing more than 80 approved boat­ing safety edu­ca­tion classes through the end of May, with more classes being offered dur­ing the sum­mer months.

Boat­ing safety offi­cials say the time to take a boat­ing safety edu­ca­tion course is before the sum­mer boat­ing sea­son begins. Hav­ing the knowl­edge, proper skills, fol­low­ing basic safety tips such as wear­ing a life jacket while boat­ing and obey­ing all boat­ing rules goes far in ensur­ing boaters and fish­er­men stay safe on the water.

For a list of avail­able boat­ing safety edu­ca­tion classes in Ohio and to reg­is­ter for a class, visit the Divi­sion of Watercraft’s web­site at www.ohiodnr.com/watercraft or call toll-free in Ohio at 877-4BOATER.

Until next time, Good Hunt­ing and Good Fishing!

Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.