Anxious to see if the pattern of big catfish feeding shallow at night in this heat was still on last night I fished a big rock bar jutting out into the Great Miami. Since it was in the mid nineties again I didn't start fishing till three am. Things couldn't have started out any worse. I'd been there about five minutes when I had a strike. Setting the hook hard, the lure hung up for a spit second before hurtling back like it was shot out of a rifle. The 1/2 ounce lipless crankbait hit me right in the chin and the rear treble buried itself in me halfway between my chin and lower lip. right where I couldn't see it. After finding a big log to sit on I tried unsuccessfully to unhook myself with a pair of pliers. Finally I tied a length of line into a loop and slipped this over the hook. Then whack a sharp yank on the line popped it out followed by a long string of curses. But maybe it was a case of paying your dues because right away I was into fish. I caught a shovelhead about five pounds then a nice channelcat and then this big saugeye:
And after that a really nice shovelhead that hit right on the bank, really tearing things up in the shallow water:
It took a while for things to settle back down after that and I sit for a while admiring the gorgeous full moon. Then right before dawn another good fish nailed the crankbait. I thought it was another shovelhead till the bumpy head rolled up. I figured
it was a good blue cat till I landed it and saw the outer margin of anal fin which was rounded and not straight. It was a whopper channelcat! I took several close up photos to make sure I could check later at home and sure enough a channel. It takes a 26 inch channel to make Fish Ohio and this guy was almost twenty eight. A night that started off so badly ended up pretty good after all.
Completely unknown in the Little Miami when I was a kid, if you night fish anywhere along the Little Miami and are quiet chances are you might just see a beaver. One of my most memorable encounters happened just a few weeks ago. I was sitting on a rock bar just upstream of the old King's dam catfishing when a beaver hauled himself out on the rocks ten feet from me. In the dark all I could see was the beaver silhouette as he sat grooming himself for at least a minute before moving upstream. Right above me was a pretty fast moving riffle and I was amazed at how effortlessly he moved against the current. The beaver you see in these photos I saw in Turtle Creek which is a small creek that runs into the Little Miami at South Lebanon. He was huge! I'm guessing around fifty pounds! Even if your not on the river at night if you look closely you can find beaver sign all along the river. Although they do not build the classic beaver dam on the Little Miami they den in the bank all along the river. The easiest beaver sign to spot is the chewed up tree stumps or trees partialy cut down. Almost every river bottom has these if you look closely as you explore the Little Miami
