Introduction to the river.

My little story is not meant to be an exact cast here, throw that, fishing guide to the Little Miami. Instead it's more the ramblings of a guy who has grown up around the river and seen most of it in a lifetime of fishing. There are individual sections on some of my favorite areas and a little background on each with a few fishing stories thrown in. Most of the people in the old photos are either relatives of mine or places they worked or knew on the river. Again this is not a dry history from a textbook but more along the lines of local lore and legend. And while I've tried to be as accurate as possible don't take me as the gospel on these things. After all, it is just possible that the Loveland Frog, the Shawnahooc or “River Demon” might not exist. One nice thing about fishing the river is that you don't need a twenty thousand dollar bass boat and thousands more in equipment to have a quality experience. Steal your kids book bag, throw inside a peanut butter sandwich, a water bottle, and a small box of lures, grab a spinning rod and your all set. Do put on some old tennis shoes that you won't mind getting wet. After all, that is probably the best way to experience the river, wading wet on a hot summer's day. As for lures you don't need thousands, while the rivers bass may be picky according to size or presentation a dozen or so lures will cover just about every situation. In my river box I carry eighth ounce jig heads and smoke metal flake grubs, inline spinners like the Roostertail in mostly shades of white or silver, the smallest size of floating rapala, a tiny torpedo topwater plug, and an assortment of small crankbaits. My selection for the flyrod leans heavily towards topwater bugs made out of deerhair because they are so much fun and catch fish. A more practical selection would lean more towards clouser minnows and crayfish imitations. As far as live bait goes, the Little Miami is a river's river and abounds with fish that will jump on a nightcrawler or live crayfish. In fact a hellgramite or small crayfish might just be the best option for smallmouth on the river too. That's one of the nice things about the river. Not only is it perfect for classic flyrod fishing where you can get as fancy as you want and spend more on a flyrod than you might on a decent used car but the river is also ideal for just getting away and relaxing and fishing it the way Huck Finn might have. Wading in old jeans and catching channel cats and drum on worms. A day on the Little Miami is a step back in time to the way fishing used to be, when the object was to get away and enjoy yourself. If you look around you will also find yourself seeing things that you had no idea existed here in today's rushed world. Turtles digging nests in the sand, eagles flying overhead, a deer coming down to the river at dusk. Try it, you just might like it...

Reading the water...

Here we have a drawing of a productive stretch of river. Water quickens as a hole shallows and pours over a riffle that deepens into a run before the river deepens again into another pool. Long slow pools in the Little Miami typically have a soft bottom that does not provide much food for either bass or catfish. Often they run waist deep for hundreds of yards and when the water is clear you can see that are devoid of both cover and fish. But as the water speeds up at the tail of a pool the bottom becomes hard, mostly a mixture of smaller gravel and rock while the riffle/run below has bigger rocks mixed in. This area of hard bottom can run deceptively far up into the pool unseen from above the water, but as soon as the bottom begins to harden it can hold fish. Often the faster water in the tail becomes smooth as it shallows and is known as a slick. In spring, after the water is sufficiently warm enough for smallmouth to be active, all through fall, the tail of pools are the most consistent fish producing spots on the river. I usually start out with an inline spinner cast cross current and quartering upstream, fan casting my way across the tail. An inline spinner's blades will not turn correctly if cast directly upstream so be sure and cast both accross stream and upstream. If the tail has a slick, a topwater twitched as it sweeps downstream can be exciting as can a deerhair bug fished with a flyrod. Be sure to throw a few casts up further into the hole in case the current has swept away the muck further up into the hole than it looks. The tail of a big pool is a place that I will often stop and fish again walking out at the end of a fishing trip as fish drop back out of a pool and begin to feed replacing those you might have hooked earlier. Some of the best spots on the river, the destination spots, have a distinct tail/riffle/run/pool transition from onr pool to the next. These spots are also the food factories in the river. hellgrammites, caddisflies, snails, baitfish, and crayfish abound. The run or head of the pool is also prefered habitat for small mussels. If deep holes and pools are the living rooms and bedrooms of the stream basses world, think of the riffle and run as his kitchen and dining room. The run or deep end of a riffle is also a good place to search for feeding sauger, white bass, and channel cats. The water depth and speed can vary greatly over the length of a riffle/run and you can end up throwing half the lures in your box in one hundred yard stretch. Don't be afraid to keep switching lures here as conditions dictate. Our drawing also shows a shallow backwater. These are often small fry nurseries and are filled with tiny fish seeking safety in the shallows. Very late in the day or at first light can find bass patrolling the deeper edges of these backwaters. Deeper backwaters can also be a fun place to throw a dry fly for pumpkinseeds and other panfish. At the bottom of runs weedbeds often begin, holes or breaks in these can hold bass but they are mostly one fish spots.



In the next drawing we see a smaller stream entering the main river flow. In flood these streams spew rocks out into the river and create their own rock bar and/or riffle in the Little Miami. These act just like the riffles between the pools in the river, speeding up the water flow and creating a hard bottom and another food factory. These are great place to throw either a grub or jig, letting it sweep downstream in the current off the end of the bar and into the bar's eddy. The water above the bar becomes in essense a miniature tail not unlike the tail of a pool and should be fished accordingly. As the water sweeps around the rock bar at the incoming creeks mouth it often creates a seam where fast water flows past slow water. This seam can extend for quite a ways downstream holding fish. Here a fish can hold in slower water and dart out and catch food as it passes by. Here you also often see gar holding in clear water.



In the third picture we have a bend in the river. Usually you can only fish such places from the shallow inside of the bend with the far bank being to steep to fish from. Very early and late in the day you can sometimes find bass herding minnows up on the shallow gravel of inside bends. If you cast ahead of these swirls with a small rapala or inline spinner you allmost always are rewarded with a jolting strike. The outside of river bends are typically the deepest spots in the river as the current hits here full force in flood, scouring out a hole. If there is any flooded timber in the hole, here is where you want to try and catch that big shovelhead. The now defunct railroad ofen dumped huge amounts of stone and riprap along outside bends to controll erosion. Here, with both current and cover, bass and catfish find good hunting so the fishings often great. The best example of this kind of cover is the "Big Rocks" just upstream from South Lebanon. These kind of spots, like distinct riffles/runs, are destination spots that you plan a fishing trip around. A plastic grub might just be the best lure choice here but plan on losing a bunch of them to the rocks.

Of course there a million other kinds of fish holding spots in the river besides the ones listed above. Bridge abutments, holes or cover in a pool etc., but they all usually have one thing in common, except in winter, when they congregate in deep pools, gamefish in the river prefer rock or gravel to a mucky bottom. Find that with some moderately deep water nearby and odds are you will find fish.

The Snake...Roxanna and Spring Valley

So you've walked all the way down to fishpot ford, bushwacked back up to the truck, then a week or two later maybe you found the old kings dam in the thickets below the old junction. You might have even sniffed out a riffle or a hole or two that it seems like only you know about. Your starting to think you know the river about as good as anybody. But there's those pesky rumors, your buddy that can't fish a lick, but who is one of those hard core macho kayaker dudes, tells you about the place where the river bent hard back on itself then back the other way again and again till he wasn't quite sure which way was east or west anymore. You ask where and he seems vague, mutters something about no roads and strainers and changes the subject. Six months go by and you overhear some guy's nightmare canoe story, how they ended up coming out after dark and how the river twisted and turned just like in the kayaker's story. There's no place like that on the Little Miami right? Idly you ask where he took out at and later with a little help from google maps your looking at this...





Welcome to "The Snake". So how do you get there? It sits a mile or so above the road at Spring Valley Wildlife Area's unknown little access ramp. Right behind that old gravel pit, you know the one with so many no trespassing signs your not sure if they would have you arrested if they caught you cutting thru or just shoot you. You could walk the riverbank, well, I've done that but it's decidedly unrecommended. In early, early spring maybe but later it's three quarters of a mile of head high stinging nettles that felt more like three hundred miles by the time my itching beat up body finally stumbled out of the nettles and straight out to just sit in the river and cool off. Hmmm, so can't you just park over there by those big tanks on 42 and bushwack across that field and hit the river on the other side? Well a drive by shows a tall chain link fence topped by barbed wire. Ok, so you will just walk up the bike trail a mile or so and cut back down the riverbank, won't that work? Well theres more no trespass signs and more of those d#@n nettles. A canoe seems the most practical way to get in but then you have to stop and beach the thing 12 or 15 times to even begin to fish half of the spots you want to because you pull it up on a bar to fish and fifty yards later there is another gravel bar to fish and then fifty yards another and another below that and on and on. It's not like further downriver where a spot screams "fish right here". Instead there is one pretty good looking spot that should hold a fish or two after another all the way thru. I've been there a half dozen times or so and haven't even started to learn the place yet.















I can tell you there is alot of sand and gravel bars made out of smaller stuff than downriver. The rocks are closer to marble size than fist sized and the bars run way out into the river and they seem to move around a bit everytime I go. If I'm in the gorge below South Lebanon and I find a rock bar I know there is a good chance it was there in my father's day, up here I'm not sure if it was there before the last storm.







There is a lot of fish here though. And if you like the flyrod bring it, although the rivers a third of its size down at say Fosters, all those rock bars give you room to backcast and here the rivers full of strainers and stumps that hold rockbass, if the smallies don't cooperate, that willingly bop a fly. However you manage to get in, (parachute maybe?) bring bug spray, lunch (it's gonna take awhile), and wear jeans to try and protect yourself from the nettle jungle. Or better yet believe me when I say the fish are bigger downstream, the wadings easier, the access is easier, and just put the snake on that list of places your going to fish "someday" and leave it to the crazy people.






Downstream of the snake the river flows thru the Spring Valley Wildlife Area. Theres a nice little access road that seems known only to the dove hunters that hit the sunflower fields in the fall. But between the sunflower fields and the river sits a classic riverbottom thats has some majestic trees. You can find big sycamores scattered all up and down the length of the river but theres a grove of real giants here.












Further downstream the river flows by the marsh in Spring Valley Wildlife Area, one of the best birdwatching spots in the state if not the whole eastern US. More than 230 species have been seen here. Yep that's not a typo, 230, alot of states haven't even listed that many in the whole state. The marsh also holds beaver, otters, deer, muskrats galore, and decent fishing for panfish and largemouth bass. Theres a nice trail around the marsh and a long boardwalk runs out into the cattails at the upper end.















It's high on my list of places to critter watch and just explore, with everything from baldcypress trees in the water to overgrown fields and upland woods. The river here has a few bass holding riffles, some long pools, and lots of wood and trees in the water. I can usually count on having the water to myself and like to just kick back here and catch some channels and drum on nightcrawlers and enjoy the quiet.

Magrish River Lands Preserve

If your roaring across the Little Miami on Kellogg Avenue and see the sign for Salem Road take it. Down around the looping exit ramp and you turn into the Magrish River Lands Preserve, less than a minute away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. Magrish itself is only a 45-acre park but it butts up against California Woods on one side and the opposite river bank belongs the best I can tell to Lunken Airport. The river flows under the Kellogg Avenue bridge and out to the Ohio River. Here sits a giant marina busy with boat traffic from the giant Ohio River but upstream of that sits Magrish and quiet, quiet, quiet. Well almost, just when you think your way upstream somewhere away from the big city here comes a plane from nearby Lunken Airport buzzing overhead. The airport makes up for that though (almost) by helping keep Magrish a little bit isolated and off the beaten path. You might share the place with a lone birdwatcher but your just as likely, during the week at least, to have the place completely to yourself. And there's somehow alot of empty space to have completely to yourself, for a long ways upstream there is nothing in the floodplain even though your in the city. Up river a bit towards state route 125 I caught the largest fish I've ever caught out of the Little Miami, a huge carp I guesstimated at somewhere between thirty five and forty pounds. People that live here and fish the river daily tell me that the fish seem to wander in and out of the Ohio. This makes for quite a bit of mystery, one day the river here is full of fish, the next seemingly empty. But this also makes for a great diversity of fish too with white bass schooling one day and something different like hybrid stripers the next.
The history of this place is really the history of Cincinnati itself for the cities original settler, Benjamin Stites, settled here on 20,000 acres. Stites owned the riverbank from the rivers mouth to upstream of present day Lynken Airport. Benjamin Stites was a trader who seemed to buy and sell a bit of everything when a band of Shawnee stole his horses and some goods near Washington, Kentucky. A party set off to try and recover them and followed the Shawnee across the Ohio and up the Little Miami. Supposedly Stites was so taken by the beauty of the Little Miami river valley that he decided then and there that he would someday settle here. He helped persuade John Cleves Symmes, a New Jersey congressman to purchase territory between the Miamis from the federal government, divide it into parcels, and sell the land to settlers such as himself. In 1787, Symmes contracted with the United States Treasury Board to buy one million acres of the region. Symmes’s first buyer was, of course, Stites. And the rest, as they say, is history. Being subject to floods of both the Ohio and Little Miami rivers has kept this little island of peace possible as the great city of Cincinnati has grown up all around it.

Armleder Park

Over the hill from Ault Park and just off route 125 and east of downtown is another jewel in the Hamilton county park system, Otto Armleder Memorial Park. Over three hundred acres of soccer fields, dog parks,and rollerblading trails hide the fact that the whole backside of the park straddles the Little Miami River. And not just any stretch of river but a very interesting one containing a number of bends, riffles, and the biggest rock bars on the river. Unfortunately the proximity of the dogpark means there seems to always be a labrador retriever splashing up and down the riverbank. But get there early in the morning before people come pouring into the park and enjoy some of the best fishing in the whole river for that piscatorial dinosaur, the gar. Armleders extensive shallows with a rock instead of muddy bottom are prime territory to catch one of these scary monsters. That long bony bill filled with sharp teeth makes gar very hard to hook with conventional techniques. I use medium spinning tackle and cut bait. The trick is to cut the bait into a one inch square and use a small hook. Use just enough weight to keep the bait in place or even none if possible. The bait is cast out and the bail left open and the line secured by a tiny rock so the gar can pick up the bait and run with it. Typically the fish will take off on a lightning fast run and you need to wait. And wait, and wait, its allmost impossible to wait too long to strike when gar fishing. You want the fish to swallow the bait as its nearly impossible to land one otherwise.
They are strong and able fighters and I've had them jump completely out of the water during the battle. By the way don't use a stainless steel hook as you are just going to cut the line to release the fish. The enzymes inside the gars stomach will disolve the hook rather quickly. Allmost any fish you catch of whatever species that is hooked deeply has a much much higher chance of surviving if you cut the line than try to rip the hook out. Armleder has some wide very shallow stretches that are not great fish holding spots but the bends have some places that hold all the major fish species in the river. Theres also a very nice little known canoe launch that will let you explore more of the river too. The huge gravel and rock bars make Armleder a super destination spot in the spring and late summer when wading birds are migrating thru. Theres a nice shaded trail that follows the riverbank that allmost lets you think you are in wilder country too that offers fine river views to the fisherman or birder.

Stubbs Mill and Halls Creek

From the road the bridge looks new and modern but if you follow the faint path alongside the bridge to underneath you find the big support columns holding up the bridge are layed up out of old stones from the river and the bridge is very very old.
Under the bridge it is often possible to have a nice little fishing trip if you only have a spare hour just by fishing right here. Here at the bridge there is a good riffle and behind each column the river has dug out a nice eddy. A few years ago a friend of mine caught a nice three and half pound smallie here on a small rapala before I even got a lure tied on. Between the first column and the bank is some slow water that never fails to give up some pumpkinseeds to my flyrod, in my mind the prettiest fish that swims.
Its appropriate that Stubb's Mill road crosses the river here on such an old bridge for the road is named after the mill built on the river here in 1802 and ran by Zimri Stubbs. The old stones of the bridge create a perfect nesting spot for swallows and they put on quite a show in early summer as they raise their young. The sleek swallows remind me of fighter planes as they swoop up and down the river catching bugs.
At the time Zimri ran the mill here, this section of river was part of Mount's Station. Mount's Station was a huge block of land granted to William Mounts as part of the Virgina Military District. The Virginia Military District was created between the two Miami rivers to reward soldiers with land grants who had served in the revolutionary war.
Downstream of the bridge river road closely follows the river two miles downstream to South Lebanon. In the last few years this section of road has experienced the odd
phenomenon of "eagle jams" as cars stop to look at a bald eagle perching in the trees above the river. This is probably the best section of the entire Little Miami to see an eagle from the car as they are frequently seen here.
Above the riffle at the bridge is a long run leading up to a fine riffle to fish. Here on each side of the river are the first of the several gravel pits that line the river between here and the town of Morrow. On the right bank looking upstream the big sycamores are filled with huge nests of a great blue heron rookery. Their cries fill the air in late spring and early summer as the great birds come and go from their nests.
I'm allways filled with sadness when fishing here, knowing what amazing history was destroyed by these gravel pits. For here on the banks overlooking the river once stood a great serpent mound 1300 feet long built by the Fort Ancient Indians. This great mound was destroyed by the digging of the gravel pits. Just behind the pits stands the new high school which was also built on the site of the Stubbs Earthworks, a large ceremonial center for the Hopewell Indians. This was also the site of "Woodhenge", a huge circle 240 feet in diameter that was outlined by hundreds of huge posts made out of tree trunks by the indians. A small creek named Bigfoot Run winds around the pits and across the school property before entering the hills. Here I have found reduction flakes from arrowhead making in the water of the creek.
On the ridge overlooking Stubb's Mills is a new subdivision. Luckily the builders of the subdivision let the experts examine the area after uncovering numerous relics.
It was discovered a large indian town once stood here. In the soil was found millions of reduction flakes made by flintknapping. Some of these flakes were from stones as far away as Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and even obsidian from Wyoming! I've read a theory that the Indians completely changed the surrounding woods here. Girdling unwanted trees with stone axes and keeping the undergrowth down with periodic fires, till the woods was full of just nut and mast bearing trees for food and the undergrowth all new growth that would attract game like deer. This whole section of river in prehistoric time must have actually seemed quite settled with open fields for growing corn, mounds and earthworks, houses and open parklike woods. I imagine the first settlers at Mount's Station must have turned over relics like bits of pottery with every furrow they plowed.
Above here the river is a long deep pool stretching for half a mile to the riffles below the mouth of Hall's Creek. I often imagine indians paddling canoes or swimming in the languid waters of this big pool next to their village. Around any wood in this pool is a good place to try for crappies and sunfish. I have encountered a few kentucky spotted bass here but not enough to come up with any sort of pattern.
At the head of this big pool begin the riffles of Hall's Creek. Hall's Creek enters the river from the left as you wade upstream amidst an outstanding series of riffles and runs in the river. This is one of those sections of river where you might expect to catch four or five different species of fish in a morning using something like a small hair jig or plastic grub. Right at the mouth of Hall's Creek the river makes a sharp turn and has dug a deep hole known locally as the whirlhole. Along the outside bend the current has eaten away at the bank forming a large cliff that swallows nest in.
Opposite the cliff in early spring marsh marigolds carpet the river bottom completely in yellow. One morning while walking down to the river I walked up on a young doe standing among the flowers, beams of sunlight streaming the sycamores. It was one of those perfect small momments you never forget.
The whirlhole often yields nice catfish. I'll never forget the big channel cat I caught here on a grub that had me thinking for a minute I'd hooked a record smallmouth. Softcraws or nightcrawlers can be very productive fished here. And the run leading down to the whirlhole often yields a nice bass or two to a jig sweeping down with the current.
Often while fishing here I'll search the rockbars thrown up by the river and up Hall's Creek itself for fossils. The whole of the Little Miami watershed is rich in fossils but a few years ago a cloudburst was centered here that dropped eight inches of rain in a few hours. This caused Hall's Creek and the other nearby creeks to blow out and exposed tons and tons of rock rich in fossils.
Actually the entire Little Miami watershed including tributaries like Todd's Fork and Ceasers Creek and Hall's Creek were cut by an even greater flood, the melting of the great glaciers at the end of the last ice age. The torrents of meltwater cut the steep valleys and layed down the gravel beds mined all along the river.
As the water cut the valleys of the Little Miami drainage it exposed the layers of rock formed in the Ordovician Age, about 500 million years ago. Then a great shallow sea covered this area and now I often find the fossils of cephalopods here at Halls Creek. Cephalopods were squidlike creatures that thrived in the ancient sea. Some types of cephalopods were the largest animals of the Orodovician world. Fossils have been found measuring over thirty feet in length and even ones of seven feet have been found close to here. Most fossils of cephalopods I find along the river are one to three inch sections of their segmented shells, but here at Halls Creek after the big storm I found a complete shell of a small cephalopod allmost eight inches in length. Trilobites, bryozoans, and brachiopods are also found in the rocks of the river valley.
My wife once remarked that while doing laundry she never had to look for other women's phone numbers and the like in my pockets but instead had to watch out for wierd things like rocks or pieces of bone. It seems I'm constantly picking up something while bumming around the river.
Here at Hall's Creek I've come a mile upstrean from Stubb's Mill and usually get out of the river here and hike back down the road to my truck at the old bridge. After all encountering Heron rookeries, Indian mounds, old pioneers, great floods and fossilized sea monsters along with occasional smallmouth bass makes for a pretty full morning.








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