With todays forcast closer to a typical august day rather than may I decide to get an early start on the days fishing. My goal for the day is to see if the smallies are biting yet on the Little Miami but first a pit stop at Caesar Creek lake to wait for daylight. Rigging my ultralight spinning rod with a light egg sinker, swivel, and hook, I bait up with nightcrawler in hopes of just catching anything. Right away I have a bite. It's a white bass, a bit of a surprise fishing on the bottom.
Soon another run and I'm into a bigger fish. It's a nice carp, quite the battle on six pound test line.
A few minutes later, another then another, all just about the same size.
As the sky brightens in the east, it's off to the Little Miami.
Almost right away a nice smallmouth nails my grub then hurtles skyward throwing the hook. A dandy fish too, better than any I ended up catching the rest of the morning. But average sized smallies hit regularly. Not fast and furious but ofton enough that I feel I'm catching fish rather than just fishing.
I fish downstream to a bit of a secret spot I know. Here if you wade the river there is a steep bank that backs up to an abandoned
gravel pit. The whole side of the pit facing the river has steep clifflike banks but I know a secret. In one spot a small gulley cuts down to the pit and if your carefull you can get down to the water. Ive never seen a trace of another person finding my little gulley,no footprints, no trash, no path. Here a shelf with a gravel bottom you can wade extends for about seventy yards of knee to waist deep water surrounded by very deep water. The water is perfectly clear and you can see the bottom in water over your head so the ultralight is perfect for here. For about an hour action is fast and furious most small largemouth with the rare smallmouth mixed in. But I do catch a couple fairly nice sized bass before the heat shuts down the fishing and I head for home.
Well we decided that after spending the winter with us that it was time to grant Scooter the garter snake his freedom. Scooter doubled in size over the winter eating pinkie mice but never really tamed down and was comfortable in his 20 gal aquarium. So while out fishing the Little Miami I found a toad hopping along on a rock bar. I dumped out a little plastic tupperware bowl I carry some things in my fishing pack with and he was homeward bound. Brenda put about three inches of dirt in the bottom of the aquarium, assorted plastc plants and big piece of bark for him to hid under. She also buried two plastic bowls nested inside each other to the rim in the dirt and filled them with water. The reason to have two nested is so its easy just to lift up the top one to change the water without disturbing the whole tank. So far Toad has instantly started eating crickets and hopping around, he seems much more comfortable than Scooter ever was. Today Brenda put a half dozen little feeder fish in his bowl it will be enteresting to see if he can catch them. Toad is a Fowler Toad, a bit less common than the Eastern American Toad which is Ohio's other species of true toad. When handled roughly Fowler's toads feign death and plays "possum." They may lay on its back with legs curved upward and may remain motionless for several seconds until the threat has passed. Toads have enlarged glands (called the paratoid glands) on the side of the neck, one behind each eye. These glands secrete a viscous toxin that gets smeared in the mouth of any would-be predator, inflaming the mouth and throat and causing nausea so it's important to take care to wash your hands after handling a toad, and to avoid touching the mouth or eyes until having done so. Other than that Toad is proving to be an active and enteresting guy to watch. Scooter we took to Fallsville Wildlife Area and released in the tall grass next to a pond. Plenty of food and tall grass to hide from hawks and other predators in. I set Scooter down in the grass and he coiled up before taking off. I bent down and nudged him a bit and BAM he bit me, then took off thru the grass...
