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The amount of data that is available to us is staggering.
No matter what you are looking to research, it's a pretty sure bet that you are never more than just a few clicks away from being able to open up access to a wealth of information.
There's a problem, though. Some of that information comes from questionable sources and, at best, can leave big doubts about its accuracy.
That's why it was refreshing to hear last week that there was new information added to the DataOhio Portal.
If you haven't had a chance to utilize it yet, the site offers a real gold mine about information on a lot of aspects of life across the state. As the description on site says, the portal displays public datasets that are available on the InnovateOhio Platform. It's about making information easily available, which as the site adds, improves interactions with state agencies and institutions.
The availability of the portal was a key part of an announcement by Lt. Gov. John Husted last week. Husted announced that four new tools -- Where to Fish, Sport Fish Report, Angler Survey and Waterbody Report -- had been added to the portal.
It's information, he said, that will give those who like to fish a lot of information.
"The best places to fish are usually kept secret, but not in Ohio," Husted said in a press release. "Now, anglers can find out where the fish are through the DataOhio Portal that provides data-driven guidance on the best fishing opportunities across the state."
You can access all of that information at data.ohio.gov. Once there, you will be able to create an account and open up more than 300 datasets, dashboards and visualizations, the release said.
For example, if you look inside the Where to Fish tool and set your search parameters for a 50-mile radius of Steubenville (ZIP Code 43952 to be exact) and scroll down, you can see that for the survey year of 2016, the size of largemouth bass in Jefferson State Lake was fair, with abundance being listed as excellent.
At Tappan Lake, in 2021, the size of largemouth bass was good and abundance was fair. It was the same for smallmouth bass.
If you look under the Waterbody Report and search for Salt Fork Lake, you can learn that in 2021, the catch per effort ratio across all types of fish was 10.34. At Tappan Lake, meanwhile the number for 2021 was 30.89.
Also included on the portal, you can see that for this stocking year, rainbow trout are listed catchable, and the channel catfish from stocking year 2022 are listed as yearlings. For Tappan Lake, saugeye that were part of this year are listed as fingerlings. The Fish Stocking Records dashboard, by the way, is the most popular on the portal, with more than 63,000 views according to last week's release.
Those numbers can be important -- according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the state offers 124,000 acres of inland water, 7,000 miles of streams, 2,25 million acres of Lake Erie water and 481 miles of the Ohio River that is open for public fishing.
And, people of all ages are looking to take advantage of all of those opportunities -- the ODNR reports that from March 1, 2022, through Feb. 28 of this year, there were 678,080 fishing licenses sold.
You can find a lot of information in the portal, and, while all of it is interesting and can give you a very clear picture about what is happening across many topics, including in lakes and streams across the state, Husted offered an important reminder:
"This tool is designed to take you where fishing is the best -- but figuring out how to catch them is still on you," he said.
(Gallabrese, a resident of Steubenville, is executive editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times.)