glider90

Appreciate the replies. We definitely had fun, and learned a bunch. We will return this fall for sure, with much more planning. “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."

We had quite an adventure in AEP. We drove out Friday afternoon, camped at site A (Hook lake) Friday night and drove him Saturday evening. I definitely needed to do some more research before we took this on. Lessons learned: ~Lack of GPS is no joke. We never got really lost driving, but had to get to the top of a hill a couple times to get signal and then get mapping info. In the future I will take paper maps with routes determined ahead of time to get from one area of interest to another. ~A high clearance vehicle is a must. My wife and daughter had our Edge, so I took my little Focus ST. Several times we ended up on a road that I had to back my way out of. Many roads are unimproved, and the more unimproved they are the better the fishing likely is that it leads to. ~The campgrounds are really nice. Yes, no shower and pit toilets, but well kept, large spots and free. We arrived at site A around 6:30 Friday, and there were only a few of the 34 spots left. ~The fishing pond at site A for kids 15 and under is awesome. I dropped my son off at one as we got there and went to set up the tent. He caught six decent Bass in the hour I was gone. Nothing huge, but decent 12-14" fish. His largest was maybe 16" on a topwater. He used the lake to work on his senko/wacky technique which he never really fished before. ~Saturday Dollar General had a fishing event for employees at the lake, so my son only fished an hour or so there from 7 to 8AM Saturday, then we went off in search of bass at the "wild ponds" that we could fish together. ~We had heard that for bank fishing (our situation) the access road from site A to C had several ponds worth fishing. We headed out as legendary bass jumped in our heads. ~We stopped and fished Senko's, top water, jigs, you name it at all the ponds along the A to C access road. I think they were 165, 004, 002, 001. Not a bite. All the ponds were crystal clear. At 001 (Campground C) we bumped into a nice older couple as they were putting in a kayak. I talked to them about fishing and he said he has been camping the area since 1962. He told us any lakes you can easily see from the road have been fished out. He said that is why the special limits were put in place, but it was too late and often not adhered to. His wife said there is still good fishing off the beaten path. ~ Armed with this knowledge we pinpointed a couple lakes on the map to hike to. We tried hiking back into the rear of the lakes near 984 and 284. There was a primitive trail but we were bushwacking our way through jagger bushes, poison ivy and other nasty stuff. We are not opposed to this activity, but were not equipped. Shorts and no tick repellant. We finally made it back to the rear lake, only to find ourselves WAAY above the shore on a ridge. We turned back. ~After about 5 hours of hard work and no bite in the rising heat my son was looking to get back to Hook lake, (cannot blame him) but he know I wanted to catch a fish out of the area. We decided to try one more pond. We headed north up 284 and found a T shaped pond on the map with an access road. I knew my car would not make it on that road so we decided to hike the access road. The access road was barely even hikeable! We made it down and found a very short section of shore to fish. We saw some bass and large bluegill. After several changes in tactics we each had a fish on but neither of us landed a fish. The bite cooled, I found some ticks on my sock and we decided to say uncle. ~We went back to camp, my son caught several more fish in the camp lake to get to 21 for the weekend. I packed up camp and we hit the road after 24 hours in AEP. Stopped at one of our local ponds on the way home and caught a few nice fish...felling a bit more thankful for how many easy access ponds we have in our area west of Columbus. ~I have studied the maps since I got back. We will return to AEP again. It was a fantastic experience. We had fun camping and exploring. Our goal was to see what it is all about to be armed with knowledge for our next trip. We did that, and he caught a ton of fish and learned some new techniques. I may look into a belly boat guide next time to see how much we enjoy the tubes and also to get some help in what areas to target. A belly boat for AEP would really open our options up, I just am not sure how often we would use them elsewhere. ~While we were there I was using the default map layer of google maps, since they load fastest. Now that in am home and know the terrain is so variable I have been looking at terrain and satellite imagery. The satellite views are not even close to what the default maps show! I understand how much work it is to find the truly great ponds in the vast expanse of the area. I do not expect those spots to be shared on the internet. Too many people do not respect how sacred the truly great ponds are. ~There were no convenient stores on our route in.; I planned to grab ice and some supplies close to the area, which never happened. I did run down to McConnelsville for some supplies. It is about 20 minutes from camp. Found a great pizza and sub place to get our dinner from. Next time we will come better equipped to cook. I will say the roads in the area (the paved ones anyway) were a blast to drive in the ST. ~My main now is does a good hi resolution map with all of the pond numbers exist? The ones on the AEP site are small and mainly show camping areas, but not all the ponds with numbers. I would really like to find something that does. ~jim

Thanks, we are looking forward to it!

My son caught Bass fever last year during Covid. He spent the summer fishing local ponds on the west side of Columbus. We have been wanting to hit up AEP for an overnight since last year, and the stars seem to be aligning for this weekend thanks to a cancelled baseball tourny. We want to hit Hook Lake for him (he's 13) and will fill out a permit to camp overnight at one of the sites. Thinking of hitting #91 and #92. Wacky Rigs, Jigs, and topwater will be the plan. Keeper, any intel from your recent expedition would be greatly appreciated by my son! Shoot, sorry, 'Keeper" was actually in reply to @FishinBuck07. New to forum:)