The U.S. Corps of Engineers has taken strides to improve angler access below the navigation dams. Good shoreline access tends to be the rule rather than the exception.

For example, fishing piers have been built below the Hannibal Lock and Dam, along with plenty of parking. Boat anglers should be aware that restricted areas are established below each of the dams.

During the day, boat anglers will fare best drifting jig-and-minnow combos through slack water pools, but concentrating on the shallow edges of such holes during the evening hours.

Also focus on places like gravel bars, which form the slack-water holes, the downstream edge of a hole (where it lifts up to the shallow flat formed below) and the still water in a creek mouth. Shift to a more aggressive presentation, such as a slowly retrieved suspending jerkbait. Often, the bigger walleyes will respond to a lure like this.

Shore-anglers will do their best by focusing their efforts during the latter part of the day -- or by picking cloudy, rainy days and fishing the same shallow areas described for late-day boat anglers. Higher water flows tend to push fish closer to the bank, which equates into better fishing for anglers on shore.

An agreement between Ohio and West Virginia allows resident anglers from either state to fish the Ohio River with the appropriate resident’s fishing license. This applies to boat-fishermen on the river, as well as bank-fishing from either shore.

There is no closed season or minimum-length limit on walleyes. The creel limit is 10 fish -- walleyes and/or saugers.

There is good access to this portion of the Ohio River on both the Ohio and West Virginia sides, such as the area below the Hannibal dam.

A good launch is up Fishing Creek in New Martinsville, W.Va. It’s a short boat ride up to the dam.

The Fishing Creek mouth is a good spot to start, and there are other productive areas downriver from this location.

A great aid to fishing the Ohio River is the U.S. Corps of Engineers’ navigation charts. A book of the river’s upper pools may be ordered online at the Government Bookstore’s Web site at www.bookstore.gpo.gov.

MOSQUITO LAKE
Trumbull County’s 7,000-odd acre Mosquito Lake continues to boast a reputation as the state’s best inland walleye lake. It’s often at its best early in the season, soon after ice-out.

An agreement between Ohio and West Virginia allows resident anglers from either state to fish the Ohio River with the appropriate resident’s fishing license.

Once the ice leaves, expect an early movement of walleyes into the wave-washed shallows. The area’s prevailing winds are westerly. Some of the best early-season shallow-water action occurs along the eastern shore’s gravel shallows, which are the recipient of warmer surface water pushed by the prevailing breezes.

The area near the cemetery, on the southern basin of the lake, is a well-known early-season hotspot.