Claridon Woodlands is part of the impressive Geauga Park District. The park system is about a 45-minute drive east of Cleveland. Claridon Woodlands is a nice area to walk and take in the beauties if nature. It has a nature center and features a climbing wall and high ropes course.
We gave the pond a whirl, and found bluegill and bass hitting on red wriggling worms. My five-year’s experiment in using McDonald’s french fries to catch fish did not succeed.
Fishing with a bobber and worm is a time-tested way to bag fish, especially panfish. But when the water temperature gets high, fish often move deeper in search of cooler waters.
So fish down low. Tie a sinker to the end of you line, and a small hook (size 8 or 6) a couple feet up. Add a wriggling red worm. Cast gently, let the sinker hit bottom, them tighten your line. Wait for the gentle tugs, then lift straight up. Boom—fish on!
Using this technique at Punderson Lake in Ohio, we scored bluegills, pumpkinseeds, sunfishes, channel catfishes, and yellow bullhead catfishes.
This happened—after bouncing 3/4 ounce bucktail-type jigs with trailing sparkling plastic shad and worms (4 to 6 inch) off the bottom with quick snaps of the wrist.
But this also happened, which was utterly unexpected. He weighed 12 to 15 pounds, and took a few minutes to bring to the boat. Young blue catfish came up on the jig-plastic rig too. The 15-pound leader attached to 10-pound line handled these beasts, to my amazement.
Walleye also jumped at the jig (sans plastics), but in early season are best chased with green worms popped on a round jighead (1/2 to 3/4 ounces). Drag it along the bottom on the Virginia side of the river, where the bottom is more gravelly and sandy. (Sorry, no photo!)
Fletcher’s Cove, by the way, is here, and offers rowboats you can rent out.
This drone video will give you a good sense at the size of Lake Medina. (Directions here.)
My video above will give you a good look at the side of the lake nearest the parking lot. We scored a rock bass here, saw plenty of bluegills and sunfish, along with largemouth bass. And I nabbed a northern pike in a very small branch of Rocky River next to the lake. Others report catching channel catfish, crappie, perch, and walleye.
You do not need a fishing license to fish here. The water is clear, the shored are rocky, and there’s a huge amount of space to shore fish.
Canoes and kayaks can be put in on the northern side of the lake — although it is about a 500-foot haul from the parking lot just off Granger Road. (I have not clue what the southern side of the lake looks like. I never made it there.)
They stock this small lake with “largemouth bass, bluegill, pumpkinseed sunfish, crappie, and rainbow trout. The lake is stocked with trout in the winter for ice fishing.”
You can see what fish are in there any particular season at https://www.clevelandmetroparks.com/parks/visit/parks/mill-stream-run-reservation/ranger-lake.
The parking lot (directions here) is small, and this little lake has maybe 100 feet of shore fishing. This looks to me like a good place to put in a canoe or kayak, which you’d need to lug maybe 75 feet.
You will not see any fish caught in this video. We stopped by after an early morning rain and right before another rain—less than ideal conditions for chasing panfish and bass. But, this video will provide you with a view that will help you judge whether you want to visit Ranger Lake. For sure, I’ll return to try it again—with a kayak, and maybe even a fly rod.
Read about how to fish this rig at https://kosarfishing.wordpress.com/category/shad/https://kosarfishing.wordpress.com/category/shad/
This is what it is like during the shad run. Lots of bites and catches. In a 2.5 hour period I caught close to 50 fish, with instances where caught fish on 5 consecutive casts. Here you see me get multiple bites and 2 shad in five minutes.
Shad fishing is busy work; you cast and reel every 45 seconds or so. Continue reading
