Johnpenguin Posted November 22, 2020 Author Posted November 22, 2020 1 hour ago, FishinBuck07 said: Yeah that is ridiculous! Which pond did you catch that on? You fishing from shore? The pond right behind the airport and I fish from a kayak Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted November 22, 2020 Posted November 22, 2020 Cool! That pond was so low yesterday I didn't even fish it! Looks like they are doing some kind of construction work there. Yeah we will have to meet up next spring and fish down there! I have a float tube, won't move as fast as you can but it is a lot less weight to carry on hikes! Quote
Johnpenguin Posted November 22, 2020 Author Posted November 22, 2020 27 minutes ago, FishinBuck07 said: Cool! That pond was so low yesterday I didn't even fish it! Looks like they are doing some kind of construction work there. Yeah we will have to meet up next spring and fish down there! I have a float tube, won't move as fast as you can but it is a lot less weight to carry on hikes! Ya I’m looking into getting a float tube. The kayak is kind of a hassle down there Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted November 22, 2020 Posted November 22, 2020 2 hours ago, Johnpenguin said: Ya I’m looking into getting a float tube. The kayak is kind of a hassle down there Yes sir! The first year we went down there my buddy took his kayak and carried it above his head to all the ponds we fished, he ordered a tube when we got home from that trip. Haha. Look at the Classic Accessories Cumberland tube, that is the one I have and it has been going strong for about 6-7 years now! Comfortable to fish out of! Quote
Johnpenguin Posted November 22, 2020 Author Posted November 22, 2020 22 minutes ago, FishinBuck07 said: Yes sir! The first year we went down there my buddy took his kayak and carried it above his head to all the ponds we fished, he ordered a tube when we got home from that trip. Haha. Look at the Classic Accessories Cumberland tube, that is the one I have and it has been going strong for about 6-7 years now! Comfortable to fish out of! Thanks! Quote
BrianAllan87 Posted December 22, 2020 Posted December 22, 2020 AEP has so many ponds it’s insane. There’s one or two that are absolute gems as well but they’re impossible to bank fish from. On a kayak I’m sure you could work the pond and catch the bass of a lifetime. I had little success down there but did manage 3 at pond 48 but had a HECK of a time getting down there. Definitely don’t go alone. 1 Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted April 5, 2021 Posted April 5, 2021 I have been out the last two Saturdays, the first time out I managed to catch 5 small ones on a squarebill crank in one pond. This past Saturday was not a good day for fishing, the weather was beautiful but the cold front shut off the bite completely. Had one hit on a wacky rig and missed it because I wasn't expecting it! haha. Gates are opened now so you can get to all the ponds now. Just wanted to give an update! Quote
youngpky Posted April 25, 2021 Posted April 25, 2021 Those waters seem like a great time. I may have to make a trek to fish there sometime! Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted June 1, 2021 Posted June 1, 2021 Anyone been out to the Rec Lands lately? Going next weekend for a few days, my buddy wants to go down and stay for the weekend and camp and fish for his bachelor party. Wondering what the fishing has been like lately and how the weeds are? Quote
Johnpenguin Posted June 4, 2021 Author Posted June 4, 2021 On 6/1/2021 at 10:57 AM, FishinBuck07 said: Anyone been out to the Rec Lands lately? Going next weekend for a few days, my buddy wants to go down and stay for the weekend and camp and fish for his bachelor party. Wondering what the fishing has been like lately and how the weeds are? Haven’t been down yet ? hopefully I can get down some time this month. Let us know how you do! Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted June 4, 2021 Posted June 4, 2021 29 minutes ago, Johnpenguin said: Haven’t been down yet ? hopefully I can get down some time this month. Let us know how you do! Will do! Let me know if you want to meet up sometime and go down for a day or something! Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted June 17, 2021 Posted June 17, 2021 Well the weekend was fun for sure! Friday it rained almost all day, but wow did we whack em! Nothing big but we didn't stop catching them all day long! Think we may have caught close to 100 bass between 3 of us. Saturday was a little tougher because it was blue bird skies and hotter than sin. Last pond we went to and fished till dark was the best fishing of the day. I caught 18 out of it by myself! haha, It was an awesome weekend. Biggest fish probably went 2.5# Quote
Johnpenguin Posted June 18, 2021 Author Posted June 18, 2021 On 6/17/2021 at 12:27 PM, FishinBuck07 said: Well the weekend was fun for sure! Friday it rained almost all day, but wow did we whack em! Nothing big but we didn't stop catching them all day long! Think we may have caught close to 100 bass between 3 of us. Saturday was a little tougher because it was blue bird skies and hotter than sin. Last pond we went to and fished till dark was the best fishing of the day. I caught 18 out of it by myself! haha, It was an awesome weekend. Biggest fish probably went 2.5# d**n that sounds like a blast! I’ve never caught that many there. I plan to go down the weekend after next! Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted June 19, 2021 Posted June 19, 2021 1 hour ago, Johnpenguin said: d**n that sounds like a blast! I’ve never caught that many there. I plan to go down the weekend after next! Like I said nothing big, but one right after another! Wacky rig will get the job done for ya! I was using green pumpkin magic Senkos. Went through a whole bag. My buddy was throwing a Ned rig also! Quote
glider90 Posted June 24, 2021 Posted June 24, 2021 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:) Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted June 24, 2021 Posted June 24, 2021 Wacky rigged Green pumpkin magic Senkos are what I caught most of my fish on. Squarebill crankbait also, but you will have to clean the weeds off. Haha. Threw a buzzbait and a frog a lot too, didn't catch much on them but there wasn't much wind while we were there so I am guessing that is why they weren't really after the top water! Sorry I don't know any of the pond numbers so couldn't tell ya anything about those ponds, but I am sure you can find them in those! I try to stay to some of the cloudier ponds because we seem to have better luck, compared to the crystal clear ponds! Just go and explore a little and have fun, that place is always a blast! Quote
glider90 Posted June 28, 2021 Posted June 28, 2021 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 Quote
Johnpenguin Posted June 28, 2021 Author Posted June 28, 2021 4 hours ago, glider90 said: 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 The reason the true trophies exist is because what a hassle AEP can be. My car broke down the first time I went. Imagine me and my gf(we were 20 at the time) trying to get a broken car out of there with no service. It was not fun being stuck for days. Quote
FishinBuck07 Posted June 29, 2021 Posted June 29, 2021 If you really want to figure it out you have to fish it quite a bit, nothing is easy down there for sure but that is what makes it fun to me. Definitely have to be prepared when down there, we go for a weekend and it looks like we are going for months, but I don't like to be without things and nothing is close. Shore fishing is not fun at all to me down there, I fish from a float tube and it makes it so much more enjoyable, if you are going to fish there more often then I would recommend getting a couple of those for you and your son to fish out of. And yes the harder the ponds are to get to usually means the better the fishing, not always though. Glad you guys enjoyed it and made memories together. And no there are no good maps for that place, I have found most of the ponds by spending time down there and exploring. Quote
glider90 Posted June 29, 2021 Posted June 29, 2021 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." 2 Quote
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