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Best walleye catches are made north of this area

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It’s been a rough spring for anglers and farmers alike. The farmers can’t work the soil or cut hay because of the rain and anglers suffer from muddy streams. During the rare periods when the rains hold off for a couple of days I have caught my share of trout but those dry days are as rare as a day in June.

I have said many times that we live in one of the poorest sections of the state for fishing and now even those spots look like coffee. There is one hope as summer is bass, muskie and walleye fishing time. I doubt if there is a natural trout water in Washington or Greene counties. Aside from the Monongahela River little walleye water, it is almost the rule to travel some distance to the north to fish for walleye. Pymatuming seems according to what I hear a waste of time.

Jim Roberts has a camp near Stocker Island and just came back from there. After fishing for three days, he caught a grand total of no walleye and zero crappie. Oh, he did boat a few 10-inch perch. If your boat is big enough, the angler can go north of Pymatuming and spend time on Lake Erie. I doubt if it’s muddy but what boat is large enough for Erie?

Places such as French Creek are good for a variety of fish as are smaller streams such as Redbank and the little Mahoning. Another body of water up north that offers walleye fishing is the Allegheny River. Of course, most of these northern lakes and streams hold muskie. Tionesta Lake and the spillway from this lake offers decent muskie fishing.

This is not fishing in solitude for there is a campground below the dam. But one thing is for sure: there are some really big muskie in that stretch of Tionesta Creek below the dam all the way to where the creek empties into the river. Perhaps one of the best places to hook a muskie is a very little known river in the Meadville area.

It’s been at least 20 years since I was talking to an employee of the Fish Commission and asked him where to find the best muskie water in the northwestern section of the state. This person wasn’t an informed field officer nor a desk jockey but more of a laborer. I expected him to say Pymatuming or the lake that gave up what is the state record, Conneaut Lake. Instead, he said the Cussewago Creek that was near where we were standing.

During my existence, I had never heard anyone mention the Cussewago in the same sentence with fishing. The water he was referring to is the creek that flows under Interstate 79 just north of Meadville. It doesn’t really look like a great river and can be difficult to fish as it meanders through a swamp.

The worker went on to say the Cussewago was the water where the Fish Commission netted muskie to stock in some of the better known waters of the state. I believe the only practical way to fish this stream would be a float trip.

When discussing muskie, the question always comes up: just how big do they get? In the Wisconsin and Minnesota region of the country, muskie have been netted that weighed more than 100 pounds but none that size has ever been recorded using a rod and reel. Why? Perhaps the bait being used just isn’t large enough.

A muskie was found along the shore of Lake Gordon that had two suckers in it that measured more than 24-inches long. That would be a big bait. With most rods and reels, one would have trouble handling the 24-inch sucker that was in reality bait. And one can’t help but wonder about that fish that snapped that line and got away. Maybe it was a 100 plus pound muskie. Maybe.

George Block writes a weekly outdoors column for the Observer-Reporter

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