Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

With the largemouth bass being North America’s most widely distributed and most popular game fish, it’s little wonder that bass fishing accounts for approximately 22 percent of all hours spent fishing inland lakes. Research has shown this boils down to approximately 2.2 million hours annually.

Americans love to fish for bass!

When it comes to avid bass fishermen, Ohio is right at the top. The Buckeye State also provides plenty of opportunities from bank or boat, and all five of the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s wildlife districts offer good access to public waters.

District fisheries supervisors stay on top of habitat conditions, through programs that constantly monitor the state’s largemouth bass population.

This has resulted in some of the best bass fishing anywhere in the Midwest.

“Our guidelines dictate standardized statewide sampling and sampling of each reservoir on a systematic basis,” said Rich Carter, fisheries biologist for Ohio’s Division of Wildlife District One.

“Our larger lakes are sampled annually or semi-annually. Some of our smaller lakes are sampled at least once within a six-year period.”

Carter also noted how the ODOW has been working with the Ohio Bass Federation, Ohio BASS Federation Nation and other tournament groups on the Ohio Bass Tournament Database. These groups enter their tournament results through a link on the Division of Wildlife’s Web site.

This information helps the ODOW preserve our excellent breeding stock and keeps Ohio lakes filled with large-sized fish each year. Since the first attempt to manage largemouth bass in Ohio in 1885, hundreds of thousands of these fish have been stocked and are now well established in every county.

Then, with government encouragement, thousands of farm ponds were constructed throughout Ohio from 1950 to 1980.

Huge bass grew in close proximity to anglers. (The long-standing state- record largemouth, at 13 pounds, 2 ounces, was caught in a farm pond in 1976.) And the numbers of bass fishermen increased rapidly as well.

Another management tool that state biologists use is the length limit. The first size limit was implemented in 1977 in Ross Lake, when a 14-inch minimum was placed on largemouth bass. Since that time, size limits have been strategically placed on fish in targeted lakes to speed both the size and abundance of bass.

Throughout Ohio, bass management is ongoing. The same basic approach is used in all five wildlife districts from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. The following is a district-by-district report on what the outlook is for Ohio bass.