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...