A website details the annual fish stockings conducted at waterways throughout the state, totaling 1.5 billion fish since 1970
Sharing data isn’t necessarily the best way to make friends with members of a citizenry at odds over various versions of reality anchored to alternate facts.
Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted apparently decided to take a chance anyway.
Being both a politician and a fisherman, Husted holds two positions linked in much of the public mind to a fragile relationship with truth and accuracy. Not that the addition of a pound or a few inches to a fish story can do much harm.
Let us take, then, as inerrant gospel Husted’s recent public pronouncement that citizens looking for a likely place to fish have an internet resource previously unavailable.
“As someone who has fished Ohio lakes my entire life,” Husted said, “I know how valuable this information can be to anglers who are deciding where they should take their grandchildren to fish or where they might catch that trophy they’ve always wanted.”
Website provides information on where Ohio Division of Wildlife has stocked fish
The website (https://data.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/data/view/ohio-fish-stocking-records) details the annual fish stockings conducted at waterways throughout the state, totaling 1.5 billion fish since 1970.
It's easier to navigate than some of the waterways where the fish are waiting on Ohio's eager anglers. A simple search for "fish stockings" at the state government's DataOhio portal (try a search using "dataohio portal fishing") brings up a page where you can select a map, visualizing fish sowings by location, by year, by species, by age of fish and by number.
The benefit is that someone looking for water likely to hold muskies, for instance, can easily fix on Leesville, Clear Fork or — closer to Columbus — Alum Creek as lakes that get regular infusions of hatchery-raised hordes.
Listings can help find bodies of water heavily stocked with channel cats, blue cats, walleye, saugeye, yellow perch, hybrid striped bass, rainbow trout, brown trout and steelhead.
The Ohio Division of Wildlife tries to stick to stockings in waters where a species has a good shot at growing to a size worth a fisherman’s time to chase.
“We frequently receive questions about the best locations to fish, and what they might catch when they go,” said wildlife chief Kendra Wecker. “This new self-service tool provides direct and easy access to connect people to more destinations when fishing in Ohio.”
Sunfish, which have provided many a lifelong angler with a first catch, typically don’t get stocked. That’s also true of black bass, both largemouth and smallmouth, and for a similar reason.
“Black bass naturally reproduce sufficiently in most Ohio waters, so they are not routinely stocked,” said Scott Hale, the wildlife division’s executive administrator of fish management and research.
Fishing success leans heavily on an array of variables, though, sowhile it helps to know where fish are stocked, that information by itself doesn’t reveal where the fish are in a given body of water or whether they are biting that day or on what bait.
For all that, it helps to know a fisherman who knows the water — and is willing to offer a true accounting. However, chances are nobody not in the running for sainthood is going to give away the exact location of his or her most productive hole.
Neither the lieutenant governor nor the wildlife division chief was volunteering any secret fishing locations, though it’d be interesting to find out what they’d say if asked.
outdoors@dispatch.com
The Link LonkJune 27, 2021 at 05:03PM
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Ohio anglers can now find on the net where they they'll net their favorite catches - The Columbus Dispatch
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