Piedmont Lake

[TinyTucky]

Hey fellas, planning to fish Piedmont next week sometime. Any one with experience there, could you tell me what the primary forage fish is there? Not sure if there’s shad or shiners, or if the predatory fish just eat the stocked saugeye and perch. ODNR’s website didn’t shed any light and I can’t find that information anywhere else. I appreciate any info

 

[giles]

@Floki might be able to help

 

[Trueroots]

Been some years since I’ve been there. Boat fished and targeted saugeye. We did well but like I said that was awhile ago. There are Muskie that is the main predator fish and definitely have some giants in that lake. We fished mainly the points with any structure below. Some back bays did produce nice saugeye. Also caught smallies by chance. The lake has both shiners and shad as far as bait fish. I hope this helps. Fishing there actually reminded me of fishing up in Canada. It’s beautiful and quiet!!! Best of luck to ya.

 

[TinyTucky]

Been some years since I’ve been there. Boat fished and targeted saugeye. We did well but like I said that was awhile ago. There are Muskie that is the main predator fish and definitely have some giants in that lake. We fished mainly the points with any structure below. Some back bays did produce nice saugeye. Also caught smallies by chance. The lake has both shiners and shad as far as bait fish. I hope this helps. Fishing there actually reminded me of fishing up in Canada. It’s beautiful and quiet!!! Best of luck to ya.

Primary target will be muskie for us, but plan to hopefully chase some smallmouth and saugeye as well. I appreciate your insight!

 

[cspot]

Piedmont is a lake I have been tempted to hit, but never have.

 

[TinyTucky]

Unrelated to my original post, does any one know of anywhere to camp that’s near the lake and reasonably priced and has electric hookup to charge the boat batteries? The campground on the lake is $64 a night and to me that’s outrageous for a spot to tent/ hammock camp.

 

[giles]

I think the motel in Cambridge is less than that. Salt fork ain't far, how much is that?

 

[Iowa_Buckeye]

As a teenager I spent quite a bit of time in the Egypt Valley area. When the walleye or sauger were running, the CR-100 bridge across the very south end of the lake was always packed with people. May be worth a look if this is the correct time of year?

 

[TinyTucky]

I think the motel in Cambridge is less than that. Salt fork ain't far, how much is that?

Didn’t even think about Salt Fork. I think that’s gonna be the move.

 

[giles]

#poorfolkproblems #poorsolutions

Go catch some feeesh Stashbag!

 

[TinyTucky]

@giles Heard that! Gonna take the go pro for the blooper reel lol

 

[Trueroots]

Curious as to how you did….?

 

[giles]

I heard his buddy gave him those warts back.

 

[TinyTucky]

We ended up going to West Branch. Piedmont was like 9’ higher than where it was supposed to be and there were roads closed apparently, I’m happy I did some research prior to making that drive lol. We had probably 10 follows to the boat, estimating all of them to be between 35” and 45” but never got an eat. Water temps were a lot warmer than we expected (56°-58.5°), and I assume most of the fish were spawning. We caught a couple white bass and a couple crappie while playing around with my buddies livescope. We had our most action on our second day just before and during a short storm front blew through. Wind was sustained at at least 25mph and gusts up to 40mph for approximately an hour with pissing rain. The spotlock on the boat was tits for that, but in that short window I had 4 follows. We’ll go again, hopefully mid May once the water temps come up more and the skis are done “doin their thing”.