Highlandtown Lake is a man-made lake located in
Washington Township, Columbiana County, Ohio
Washington Township is one of the eighteen townships of Columbiana County, Ohio, United States. The 2020 census reported 2,002 people living in the township.
Geography
Located in the southern part of the county, it borders the following township ...
. It was created in 1966 when the State of Ohio built a dam impounding of water on the upper drainage of the Little Yellow Creek. A lot of habitat improvement was done on what would be the bottom of the lake prior to the impoundment. It has about of shoreline and a maximum depth of about . The lake is about above sea level.
The dam is of earthen construction, rock fill. Its height is with a length of . Maximum discharge is 4196 cubic feet per second. Its capacity is . Normal storage is . It drains an area of .
Location
It is in the Wildlife District Three of the
Ohio Division of Wildlife. It is part of the Highlandtown Wildlife Area.
It is within a mile of an area known as Highlandtown. It is four miles northeast of
Salineville via
State Route 39 and nine miles south of
Lisbon via
State Route 164. It is 11 miles northwest of
Wellsville via State Route 39. A portion of the Steubenville Pike Road (Township Road 776) was covered by the lake and it now dead ends at the lake. Osborne Road crosses the northwest arm of the lake. Charles Mill Road (County Highway 413) crosses the northern arm of the lake.
Geography
The area is an
Appalachian mixed mesophytic forest. The lake is at the headwaters of Little Yellow Creek.
Fish
The lake was stocked in 1967 with
muskellunge
The muskellunge ''(Esox masquinongy)'', often shortened to muskie, musky or lunge is a species of large freshwater predatory fish native to North America. It is the largest member of the pike family, Esocidae.
Origin of name
The name "muskell ...
,
largemouth bass
The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, bu ...
,
bluegill, and
channel catfish. At present there are also
black crappie,
brown bullhead
The brown bullhead (''Ameiurus nebulosus'') is a fish of the family Ictaluridae that is widely distributed in North America. It is a species of bullhead catfish and is similar to the black bullhead (''Ameiurus melas'') and yellow bullhead (''Am ...
s,
pumpkinseed
The pumpkinseed (''Lepomis gibbosus''), also referred to as pond perch, common sunfish, punkie, sunfish, sunny, and kivver, is a small/medium-sized North American freshwater fish of the genus ''Lepomis'' (true sunfishes), from family Centrarchi ...
s and other varieties of
sunfish. In about 2000
American gizzard shad
The American gizzard shad (''Dorosoma cepedianum''), also known as the mud shad, is a member of the herring family of fish, and is native to large swaths of fresh and brackish waters of the United States of America. The adult has a deep body, wi ...
appeared in the lake. Because of feeding patterns this resulted in bass getting bigger and bluegills getting smaller. White amurs (
grass carp
The grass carp (''Ctenopharyngodon idella'') is a species of large herbivorous freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae, native to the Pacific Far East, with a native range stretching from northern Vietnam to the Amur River on the Sino-Russi ...
) have been introduced to control weeds and they have remove weed beds which were good places to fish for bass.
Facilities
There is parking, boat ramps, and a handicap dock for fishing. There is no camping in the wildlife area.
References
*Cross, Tom. ''Fishing Ohio: An Angler's Guide to Over 200 Fishing Spots in the Buckeye State.'' Lyons Press, 2008, p. 147-149.
Highlandtown Lake at Ohio Department of Natural Resources
External links
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Reservoirs in Ohio
Dams completed in 1966
Fishing in the United States
Boating
Bodies of water of Columbiana County, Ohio