River fishing at night, fishpot ford

It's at least a mile walk down to the ford. With eighty plus percent humidity, the walk was long enough to have me wading directly into the river just to cool off as soon as I got there. The water at first felt shockingly cold, much colder than it actually was.

In the heat I struggled to catch some bait to fish with but managed to catch a sunfish that was really just a bit too big. I slipped a two ounce sinker on the line and tied a big 5/0 hook on the twenty pound line of the big baitcaster. Right above the ford a long hole goes completely out of sight upriver. Here I cast the big sunfish and walked down to the riffle below to smallmouth fish. I caught a few small bass, ignoring the big rod thinking nothing would hit it till dark. Suddenly the clicker began to sing. Racing up the bar I set the hook just before something big reached a huge pile of logs piled up in the tail of the pool on the opposite bank. The rod bent double but the fish still took line. I tightened the drag to the breaking point but the fish pulled line right into the logjam. Into the river I went but it was no use. When I waded over I found the line went way back into a hole in the logjam. I could stick the whole length of the 7 1/2 foot rod into the hole but could not reach my tangled line. It was hopeless. Next time I'll bring heavier tackle.



Wading out again, I gathered wood for the night and then bass fished till dark after rebaiting the big rod. Here the river twist thru a giant s curve and forms two big islands and a maze of channels and underwater gravel bars.







In the heat the fishing was slow and I was concentrating hard. So hard that I failed to notice a rather pretty but plump lady in a kayak till she had floated right up to me. Both the kayak and her bathing suit seemed a size or two too small for her and I just stood there in the water speechless till she smiled and said "theres a beaver right behind you". Turning around, sure enough not twenty feet away was a beaver swimming lazily downstream. In a minute or two both floated away downriver and I climbed out and rigged up for the nights fishing. Off came the jig I'd been using for bass and on went a slip sinker a swivel and a treble hook for the shallow waters of the channels screamed big carp to me. The evening came hot and still. Even the usual din of insect noise seemed muted and no frogs greeted the coming night with calls. The moon began to rise right after dark, full and bright, more provolone than it's usual swiss cheese, but as the night wore on it became the color of really good muenster cheese, more orange than yellow. With the rising moon came the carp. The were skittish and after each one things had to settle down for a while between bites but it was steady all night.





In the distance a screech owl called, not its normal call but one of its stranger ones, more like a giant tree frog. If I hadn't heard this call on a tape before I'd never know what it was. Then quiet. Real quiet except for the occasional sound of the baitcaster's clicker as another carp took the bait....

A sucker for rough fish...

Many of our rivers hold an amazing bunch of fish that are largely overlooked by fishermen. Hard to catch, hard fighting and growing to nice sizes, you would think these fish would be all the rage. But they suffer from either bad press or no press and an even worse name...suckers. After all don't permit have the same downturned mouth, are hard to catch on a fly and grow to roughly the same sizes? But permit are a glamour fish and suckers are called, well, suckers. Many species are highly intolerant of pollution and used by biologists as canaries in the coal mine when it comes to water quality. Many suckers have special adaptations such as reduced swim bladders to help them stay in place in swift riffles. The hog sucker even has a head shaped to use the water like air on a race cars spoiler to create downforce to hold itself in place. And the hog sucker, like many suckers, uses big pectoral fins like a darter or madtom to brace itself in place on bottom in a riffle's swift water.











Suckers eat algae and small invertabrates and will hit a nymph if you can present it right in front of them. They will not chase a nymph though, the key is to present the fly right on the sucker's nose. I find the best way to do this is with stealthy wading and a high stick/short line nymphing technique just like you would use for trout in a swift riffle or run. Often in clear water, if you wade carefully enough you can see the fish you are presenting the fly to, but most times the swiftness of the water hides the fish no matter how clear the water is. With this in mind, work thoroughly, keeping in mind the fish will not chase the fly. A good presentation seems much more important than fly pattern, any good beadhead will get bit if you put it on a feeding suckers nose. I do tie some brighter versions of my standard beadhead nymphs to make them more noticeable to a feeding sucker. I find a long fly rod is better, it gives you more range to short line a nymph and a longer follow. A five or six weight is just about right. Suckers sometimes get a bit big to land on little three or four weights and seven weights and up are overkill. When shortlining a nymph you do not need a strike indicator but on longer casts set your indicator up the line just a bit farther than the water is deep. Setting the indicator this deep will insure your nymphs are on the bottom where they need to be. Plan on losing quite a few to snags, if you are not hooking bottom every now and again you are not deep enough. As best I can tell, there are sixteen different species of suckers in the Little Miami. Some like the white sucker are very common and some like the endangered blue sucker are among the rarest sish in the river. If you happen to be lucky enough to hook a blue sucker, handle it carefully and snap a quick picture to send to me before setting it free. Actually all suckers are an important part of the rivers food chain and should be handled carefully no matter how common they are. Other non-traditional fly rod quarry that will hit a fly include carp and buffalo. Both pretty much will eat the same flies as suckers with presentation again being much more important than pattern.



My sucker and carp fly selection.



A standard short line nymph rig.



A good rig to use where you are losing a lot of flies. The shot slides off if they hang up, saving the fly.



An easy way to add another nymph to your rig without retying everything.

A pocket full of fun...

I often can't sleep at night, a product of years spent working the late shift I guess. I'll turn on the Outdoor Channel and watch those guys dressed like Nascar drivers fishing exotic locations with $30,000 bass boats loaded down with more gear than my father's old bait shop had stocked on the shelves. And that kind of fishing is fun, I admit it. I have hundreds of lures and thousands of flies and dozens of rod and reel combos and have been known to head out looking like I'm heading down the Congo for a month instead of fishing the Little Miami for a couple hours. But do you really need all that junk to have a quality fishing trip? Of course not. You can have a great trip, possibly the best trip of the year and fit everything you need in a shirt pocket. You really only need three or four basic pieces of terminal tackle to catch fish almost every single time you fish a river like the Little Miami. First off get a pack or two of baitholder hooks in size two or four. You can substitute a similar sized hook of another style but baitholders are available almost everywhere and work great. You might want to add a pack of treble hooks in size eight too. Next get a pack of barrel swivels or two and some egg sinkers and your set. Rigging is simplicity itself. The egg sinker is slid onto the line and a barrel swivel is tied into the line about a foot down from the hook. This is idealy fished on a medium spinning outfit and six or eight pound test line. The rig is then tossed out, the rod set in a forked stick and a pebble from the riverbank placed on the line so you can leave the bail open without the line being carried away by the current. More than the tackle the key to catching at least some fish every trip depends on location. Where you want to set up is in a well defined hole just below a nice riffle. Right where the current first begins to slow. If there is an eddy and a deep pocket even better. Too many people fishing bait in the river just set up in the middle of a long slow hole away from the riffle, cover, or the main current. Most of the time this is a recipe for catching little or nothing. Thread on a nightcrawler and fish below a good riffle and you might catch just about anything in the river from all the catfish species, to the occasional bass or carp. In addition nowdays you are just about guaranteed to catch a drum or two (or ten). Any time the water temperature rises above the upper fifties a nightcrawler on light line just about guarantees some drum. Switch to minnows and you might just catch a nice sauger, white bass, or flathead. Baiting up with crayfish in the two or three inch range can also catch just about anything that swims. Change the baitholder out with the treble hook and bait up with a doughball made of wheaties and hamburger and your set for channel cats and carp. Trust me catching a half dozen five or six pound carp on light spinning tackle will change the way you look at these guys forever.
I must admit my favorite way to fish the river is wading the river casting for smallmouth bass with lures but even on these trips I often throw a dozen nightcrawlers in the daypack. About midday I'm ready for a break and stop at a nice riffle and throw this rig out while I eat a sandwich. It's amazing just how often this "break" produces the most memorable fish of the day...

The big one that got away

A whole day free. The wife had to work, no babysitting chores, I knew exactly where I wanted to spend it. There's this hole you see where the river makes a sharp turn digging a nice hole then a riffle and a long slow hole. It's one of the most consistent fish producing spots I know. You can allmost count on catching at least a half dozen bass every time you go there, I'd even caught a couple big catfish there on lures while bass fishing. The hole has one more thing going for it, it's really not that easy to get to. You have to walk a hundred fifty yards down a dry creek bed and then the hole fishes best from the far side so you have to wade the river above to do it right. I've never seen someone else fishing there during the day much less at night, so that's where I headed.





I got there early afternoon and took my time, gathered enough firewood for a nice fire and set up a nice little basecamp. I'd packed in a few special things too. A couple empty 2 liter pop bottles, some strong nylon rope, and a handfull of big 5/0 hooks. The makings of a trot line. Plus the two big baitcasting rods. You know the ones with the clickers and star drags, big enough to handle the fish you dream of catching , not the ones you actually do catch.




I then went to work, fishing worms on my light spinning rod and soon had a couple drum and a pumpkinseed for bait. I tied each two liter to heavy rocks with enough slack to let them float about chest deep and sunk them about 40 yards apart just below the rock bar where the hole first gets deep. Then I stretched nylon cord between the two bottles with a half dozen of the big 5/0 hooks on droppers spaced out evenly. I baited these with cut pieces of drum and the punpkinseed and as a finishing touch blew up and tied two balloons as floats along the main line. It was beautiful. I was sure would catch a giant. With a couple hours left till dark I then hid the two baitcasters up in the bushes and began lure fishing upstream thru the faster water with my spinning rod.











The bass fishing was fabulous, by dark I'd probably landed a dozen bass along with a couple more drum on a smoke metalflake grub. I then built a fire, changed into dry shoes, put on a flannel shirt and threw out the baitcasting rods to wait on a big catfish. The word wait should probably be followed by a couple lines that are just blank to convey more of the meaning of the word as the wait for a big catfish to bite can sometimes be epic. Every half hour or so another drum would hit just to keep things interesting. Plus two softshell turtles, one small and cute and one big enough to make me be extra carefull not to get withing range of that beaklike mouth. Sometime in the middle of the night I heard a tremendous splashing in the direction of the trot line. Grabbing the flashlight I got there just in time to see a very big fish roll once on the dropper baited with the pumpkinseed. Then before I could wade in to land it, the line went quiet. Two quiet, the big cat had come loose and gotten off. I had two nice runs on the rods but came up empty with the bait gone so I put on a nightcrawler trying to catch some smaller drum for bait. After a few minutes the line tore off in a rush and I was fast into a nice carp.





But no catfish, at dawn the score was 10 drum, 1 carp, 1 small gar, and a grand total of zero catfish. On both sides of me owls cried during the night. First the eerie unworldy cries of a screech owl then the familiar cry of a barred owl. I hooted back at the barred owl and he flew closer calling out off and on all during the night. At dawn I moved up above the riffle to the smaller hole above. Instantly a drum was on and they bit as fast as could rebait for about an hour. I even managed to catch a decent smallmouth on a nightcrawler fished on the bottom. I think I was even more surprised than he was.



Finally I went back downriver, took up the trot line, gathered my things and waded the river and headed up to the creek that was my way out. Just then a great fish broke water above me. Not in that way that big carp breech but in a huge tail slapping roll. It looked gigantic. Sneaking slowly up the bank, I crept up behind a weed bed and peeked over the bank. In the shallows were eight or ten big fish. Carp I thought, but they didn't look just right. Carp in the river are a gracefull streamlined fish and these were stockier rounder fish. I watched for a bit then it hit me. Buffalo! The world record is 88 pounds though much larger ones have been caught by comercial fishermen. I think the state record is a bit under fifty pounds. In this pod of fish there were two that were very big. I'd never caught a big one and am no person to judge their size but the largest looked a bit shorter than the 37lb carp I'd caught earlier in the year and at least as broad across the back. Since buffalo are a rounder, deeper bellied fish this was a very big fish. The water here was shallow and clear. The fish would spook if I made much commotion at all, so I hooked on a nightcrawler on an unweighted hook and crept forward behind the tall weeds. After a minute or two one of the big fish and a smaller one swam my way. I cast the worm out ahead of them and waited. They both swam right over the bait and the line twitched and began to move. I set the hook and was fast into a fish...the smaller one of course. Not that he was small, I guess around ten pounds but by the time I landed him in the shallow water every fish had left the pool. All in all a very fine fishing trip.

ole buglemouth