ENJOYING THE OUTDOORS: AFTER STINT OF HARD TIMES, THE TOOTHY ONE IS BACK

The difference between summer sauger and summer sausage?

They're both good to eat, but summer sausage won't bite you.

Despite a set of needle-sharp teeth that makes lip-landing a painful error, sauger are back in area waters in force after a period of near-banishment. This member of the perch family, a kissing cousin of the walleye, was a major game fish species hereabouts until the species fell upon hard times during the drought years of the mid- to late 1980s.

Apparently as a result of low water elevations, clear water conditions and minimal currents, sauger experienced some poor spawning years. Along with ongoing harvest, this seemingly caused a gradual crunch on the population in area rivers and, especially, reservoirs.

Sauger became virtual strangers on Kentucky Lake, where they formerly had been an important summer target of anglers. Fortunately for fishermen, a reversal of spawning conditions in more recent seasons has the species coming back strong, with fair numbers of large, mature fish and an apparent boomer class of smaller fish now evident.

To protect the growing ranks of small sauger, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources has imposed a 14-inch minimum size limit on those fish in Kentucky and Barkley lakes and in the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers of their tailwaters.

Kentucky Lake guide Keith Cone of Benton welcomes back the sauger, noting an increasing number of recent incidental catches of the mottled, glassy-eyed fish by anglers fishing for crappie, black bass and white bass. He quit fishing for the species on the lake in the late 1980s, but now says the rebound has come far enough to warrant their pursuit once more.

"You can catch them different ways, but the best way on the lake in summer is to troll along bars on the main lake with crankbaits that will bang the bottom in 10 to 20 feet of water," Cone said.

Casting behind the boat, Cone lets out a bit more line, engages his casting reel, then puts the lure to work by idling at the lowest speed on his outboard motor. He motors parallel with an underwater ridge, probing a selected breakline by following it on his depth-finder.

"Sauger are very light sensitive, so the best times to troll for them are the first couple of hours after daylight or really late afternoon," Cone said. "Under low light, they'll come up to the tops of the bars in 10 or 12 feet of water to feed. When it's brighter, they'll hang out down the sides in maybe as much as 20 feet of water."

Pulling deep-runners like Norman Deep Little N and DD22 crankbaits, Cone finds most hits come right along bottom, hence plugs should stir the sediment as they keep regular contact with it.

"Sauger are schooling fish," notes Cone. "Anytime I catch one, I'm apt to throw out a marker buoy so I can turn around and go back through the same spot. They bunch up and you can catch several from a single area."

Cone, who has caught sauger to four pounds, said trolling should continue to produce improved catches as a large crop of fish just under 14 inches matures.

~Steve Vantreese is outdoors editor of the Paducah (Ky.) Sun.