Low head Dam Fishing

Smallmouth country is low head dam country.  Tens of thousands used to exist back in the day to power factories and mills. A lot still exist today.  Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio alone have somewhere in the neighborhood of 800. I couldn't find numbers on neighboring states like Kentucky or Indiana but off the top of my head I can think of more in those two states than I can in my home state of Ohio. West Virginia, Tennessee, Virginia, if it's smallie country, It's lo head country.  From small ones it's safe to wade around up to large ones on medium and large rivers like the Kentucky or Scioto that are drowning machines.  Safety has to be a high priority any time one is fishing or boating around a low head dam of any size. Most low head dams form a powerful circulating current below them called a hydraulic that will drown the strongest swimmer even if he is wearing a life vest. In the last twenty years between 3 and 4 hundred people have drowned below low head dams in the US so this isn't a "it can't happen to me" type of scenario. If you do not treat low head dams with respect it could easily happen to you.
All that being said, low head dams are also often among the best places to fish on any stream that has them. You can find large numbers of schooling baitfish like shad, shiners and even skipjacks if you are close to a big river like the Ohio River. In other words lots of food for gamefish. Plus current, gravel, rock, concrete. oxygenated water full of eddies and seams. Dams are just all around great places to fish. So let's talk a bit about how to fish them. Most low head dams are not just a wall in the river. Instead the water falls in two steps to dissipate the water's energy and keep it from digging the river bottom out too much. But all that falling water still has lots of power and it does dig out a hole below the dam called a scour hole. It's been m experience that every low head dam also has some sort of undercutting going on as it ages. This can create a hidden home for big fish even a heavily fished dams.

In this drawing you can easily see why such undercutting would be attractive to fish. Overhead cover, oxygen,   a strong recirculating current bring food while the fish itself rests in relatively calmer water,  what's not to love if your a fish? And 90% of the fishermen who visit the dam don't target the fish tucked up under the dam itself. It's a recipe for a trophy. Below the smallest shallowest dams where it is safe to wade close to the dam, casting a diving crankbait  or a sinking or suspending minnow plug along the dam lengthwise can produce great results. Just remember that even tiny low heads can be deadly in times of heavier flows. Below larger dams where it is too deep or too dangerous to wade right next to the dam the current is too strong for most crankbaits to run well. Here a heavily weighted jig head is often your best bet. Other good lures to try are blade baits like silver buddies and tail spinners like the little George. Compact and heavy are the rules here, you want something to cut the current and get down to calmer water under the lip.

Let's expand our look at our low head just a bit. Many low heads have a secondary hydraulic right at the base of the main fall of water. (A) Here you often see carp in the summer trying to make their way up and over the dam. It's been m experience that at most dams this area does not hold many smallmouth bass, at least not sizeable ones. Sometimes though, there are very nice channel cat foraging up here in very swift shallow water that no one seem to target. Casting a bait up onto the dam itself and letting it fall into this area can produce some unlikely but exciting catfish catches.
Then we have our undercut we just talked about (C). Just blow this is the main hydraulic or circulating current. I've seen shovelheads, channels, smallmouth and hybrid stripers high in water column here if large schools of baitfish are present. Below this boil a calmer current flows along the holes bottom. On a big dam you might find blue cats here as well as saugeye holding up during the day. Too often though this area is devoid of cover and not the best place to fish. Oddly enough this is the most fished part of the dam. Lastly we have the lip where the scour hole ends. Often there are gravel and rock bars thrown up here even to the point of forming small islands in the river. These create lots of different seams of conflicting currents that can be fish magnets. These bars often have lots of rock that hold crayfish and darters for gamefish to feed on.

At many older low heads large boulders and concrete rubble have been dumped to control the undercutting of the dam (A). This provides great cover for crayfish, insect life, sculpins, darters and well, lots of smallie food. This is done most often done at older dams that have already been undercut so there are usually nooks and crannies for smallmouth to get into also. If the holes are big enough, and they usually are somewhere along the dam, here is where a big shovelhead will hide during the day also. Over time, during flood events, some of this rock and rubble is naturally washed into the scour hole (B). Now instead of a featureless bowl there is plenty of fish holding structure. And of course some of this also ends up on the bar at the lip of the hole (C). All in all these older dams are some of the most interesting ones to fish and my favorite kind of dam.

It's very important to realize that a fish doesn't interact with it's environment in the 2 D sort of way we do walking on the ground. Instead it see's it's world in a 3 D way much as a bird flying in the air does. Even more so really as the water currents are much stronger than air currents. To a smallmouth a strong seam is an object as real as a building. Low head dams produce all sorts of currents too many to discuss really. Just remember that smallmouth love edges. Anywhere you see an edge, a seam where faster and slower water meet is worth trying below a low head. Often on at least one side or the other below a dam eddies or other respites from the current exist (C). These can be large swirling eddies as big as a house where the dam meets the bank or smaller individual ones created by concrete rubble dumped to prevent bank erosion. Again either way they produce edges where faster and slower water meet. Our undercuts (A) that we already discussed can also channel the water flowing over the dam and create seams all along the dam face. Keep an eye out for pockets of foam just sitting there indicating a calm spot in the turbulent boil below the dam. Likewise the bars formed at the scour holes end (B) are not uniform and create chutes of faster and slower water as well as water channeled sideways across the river. These chutes can create channels down below the dam for quite a ways (D) that if deep enough can hold lots of fish. If there is a theme throughout this whole discussion, it is to spot the edges. When you first look below a dam is just seems a huge mass of disorder and chaos. Slow down a minute and look at pieces of the water. Find calm spots, edges, seams. The longer and closer you look the more it will all "slow down" and begin to make a bit more sense to you. Though complicated and nothing like the "reading the water" we are used to, they are more than worth the time to learn to fish. Just remember each dam is a bit different from every other dam and looking, learning and experimenting are the name of the game.

Some shiny lil fishes

For a complete list of all fish species in the Great and Little Miami as well as the Whitewater check out this link

 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CD4QFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Foh.water.usgs.gov%2Freports%2Ffishspecies5.pdf&ei=4Hy8VMfvBMSzggTKvISgDQ&usg=AFQjCNHaOqaX2i4xZCMotjgPvLKM83GzNQ&sig2=KfsKpRzWdz58FvGirrQRlA

Here are some highlites of some of my favorites:



Emerald Shiner

The emerald shiner, like most shiners, is laterally compressed, which means they are taller than they are wide. Their sides are a shiny silver color and can also have an emerald green hue. I like to use crystal flash when tying jigs or flies to imitate shiners because of their metallic shiney sheen. Emerald shiners are broadcast spawners which is a fancy way to say they are lousy parents and just spray out eggs willy nilly and give no care to their young. Pool dwellers, they are usually found in open water and stay near the surface.  They feed on zooplankton, insect larvae, and small flying insects such as midges.

Spotfin Shiner

Spotfin shiners are one of the two most common minnow species (second only to the bluntnose minnow) found in Ohio. They are solid silver, sometimes with a bluish cast. Spotfins also have, you guessed it, one or two elongated spots on their dorsal fins. Able to thrive in reservoirs, spotfins often inhabit the pools of our streams. They tend to eat a variety of aquatic invertebrates. These guys  spawn in crevices between rocks or in bark on limbs of submerged fallen trees.

 

 

 

Chubs


Chubs are one of the most common fish in most streams. They are even abundant in  very small trickles where they are often the top predator. They feed on a wide variety of aquatic and terrestrial insect larvae and other invertebrates. Large chubs will even eat small crayfish and fish. Chubs can even be caught on a little piece of worm under a tiny float and many caught this way end up as shovelhead bait. Catching a chub or two is also a byproduct of any trip spent fishing small flies on the fly rod.

Central Stoneroller

One of the most common fish in the smallmouth streams of the Midwest is the central stoneroller. I like to think of central stonerollers as solar batteries for smallmouth. You see central stonerollers are the champions of algae eaters and  may consume up to 27 percent of their body weight in algae per day. The algae thru the miracle of photosynthesis converts sunlight into energy. The algae in turn is eaten by stonerollers and then eaten by smallmouth bass. Nice direct line, simple is always better right? Well, except that according to Wikipedia there are over 72,500 algal species worldwide in most recent estimates and maybe more than a 1000 in a single river like the Little Miami. But that's a topic for another day, back to central stonerollers. Central stonerollers have a lower jaw with a flat, shelflike extension used to scrape algae from rocks. Omnivores, central stonerollers eat detritus, animal matter, and terrestrial vegetation besides the algae that makes u almost half of their diet. Adults range in length from 3 to 5 inches, but they can reach 7 inches. Males are generally larger than females.
 It takes one to four years for central stonerollers to reach maturity. Breeding males begin building nests in late winter and continue throughout midsummer, creating large, bowl-shaped depressions   just upstream or downstream of riffles by rolling stones along the bottom with their noses . Which is where they get the name stonerollers. The males aggressively defend their nests against rival males. Spawning occurs in early spring and summer. Females remain in deeper water outside the nesting site, entering only briefly to produce up to 4800 eggs in a nest. The male fertilizes the eggs, causing them to stick to the gravel of the nest, preventing them from being carried away by the currents.
When it comes to their appearance, it seems every source I find uses the word stout to describe them so I'll go with that that. Stout brownish minnows with breeding males that have some orange and black on their fins, large pointed tubercles (horn like bumps) on their head, and reddish orange eyes.
That's a pretty wild description and also accurate.

A little bit about Darters

With winter upon us, I'm trying to bone up a bit on the complicated food chain in our rivers. Today a bit on darters...
Darters are among the most ecologically important  fishes found in found in the  streams of the midwest. In many sections of stream up to a third of all fish species will be some kind of darter. But most fishermen that wade and fish these same streams know little or nothing about them.
Darters are also an important piece of that big puzzle we are always trying to put together when we are out on the water. So here is a mini primer on these cool little fish.
Each species of darter has evolved to occupy a specific slot or niche in the food chain. That is why there are often several species in the same section of riffle. Some may occupy bigger rocks and rubble than others. Some species may live in more current or shallower or deeper water than other species. In my favorite river, the Little Miami, there are a dozen species alone.  Darters prey on insects and crustaceans, and in turn are preyed on by species such as smallmouth bass and saugeye. Darters are an indispensable  link in the food chain. The presence of darters in a stream reflects good water quality and diversity of healthy habitats.
A darter is built to maneuver in, around and under rocks and gives it an advantage as a bottom forager. Fast swift riffles provide protection for darters because few predators can live there and must move in and out even if they do forage there. In nature, it is usually true that "form follows function."  Many darters do not even possess a swim bladder. This lack of buoyancy allows them to stay near the bottom in swift currents. Many bottom-dwelling darters possess flattened, downward-sloping heads. This feature lets them take advantage of water flowing to help plane or push down on the fish's head, thereby helping the fish to remain near the bottom. Some darter species that live at mid-water depths do possess a swim bladder to help them remain suspended in the water column.
Darters are small. However, there is considerable variation in length among the species found in  our rivers, anywhere from an inch or so up to six inches long.
What darters eat varies with the lifestage of the fish. Juvenile darters chomp on small crustaceans such as water fleas, plankton and zooplankton . Adults prefer midge larvae, blackfly larvae, mayflies  and caddisflies. Larger darters species  may also eat amphipods freshwater shrimp, isopods sowbugs and crayfish. Darters do not compete with most minnow species because the minnows often occupy the upper levels of the water column. Food availability and water velocity help to determine the activity levels of darters' foraging. For example, in pools or areas of slower current, darters range farther to procure food. Similarly, when flow rates are high, travel is reduced. The presence of large crayfish which will prey on darters as well as predatory fish such as smallmouth bass will affect how much darters move also. It turns out that in nature crayfish, while smallmouth prey themselves, benefited from darters being forced to hide underneath the rocks to avoid smallmouth predation. While at the same time the crayfish crawling around hunting in the rocks evicted the darters which made them become more active and available for smallmouth to prey upon. At the same time big darters will eat small crayfish, It is, as the saying goes a fish eat fish world down there.

Photos are from the great ODNR Species Guide Index, a great source on information on all wildlife.