Morrow and Todd's Fork

"wait without hope,for hope would be hope for the wrong thing"
....T.S.Eliot


Morrow is an excellent place to start a fishing trip. I've started several trips by enjoying an ice cream cone standing on "the point", downtown at the mouth of Todd's Fork looking over the Little Miami and the Fork deciding where to spend the day casting for smallmouth. Unfortunately Morrow is a better place to base a fishing trip than to actually live at anymore. The ice cream parlor is just about the only building not boarded up or run down in the downtown. The wide street that holds the beautiful old train depot is usually empty except for a few pretty young moms forlornly pushing rickety old strollers or maybe an old man sitting on a bucket out on the point fishing. Other river towns such as South Lebanon or Waynesville are practically booming in comparison.
Although I've never seen it, local fishing lore has a nice musky caught right here at the mouth of Todd's Fork every few years. I do know that in winter on a warm day you have a chance to catch some nice saugers here. The biggest saugers I've taken in the river have been caught here. A plastic grub on a jig head or a minnow are the first choice for sauger in the river. Sauger have the odd habit of actually liking some resistance when biting and using a much heavier jig head or sinker than you would use for any other fish can sometimes up your success rate.
If you ever find yourself out on the point looking out on the river turn and look just up Todd's Fork at the old railroad bridge. Twice I've seen the river pouring over this bridge in floods. Now turn and look directly across the little miami at the river bottoms on the far bank. If you follow a line in your mind level with the old railroad bridge you can see why the town of Fredericksburg is no longer there, just a few run down old houses including the one that held Cook's bait shop when I was a kid. But before there was even a town of Morrow, Fredericksburg was founded on the far bank just after 1800. Giant floods such as the 1913 flood would cover anything there to the rooftops. Just upstream before you get the 123 bridge across the river the site of the first bridge across the little miami was built here in 1818.
Morrow itself didn't really come into existance as a town until the tracks of the Little Miami River Railroad Company reached here in 1844. After that Morrow boomed along with the railroad then died along with the railroad. The town itself was named after railroad president Jeremiah Morrow, the two time governor of Ohio who was Warren Counties most famous citizen. Morrow was friends with Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams. Morrow was a jumping off point for sportmen riding the train out of Cincinnati to fish the Little Miami. My own father worked for the railroad on a section gang out of the Morrow depot that was responsible for the track from Morrow downstream to Fosters. Just upstream of the 123 bridge is the ruins of an old dam and millrace that I think may have belonged to one of Morrows most famous characters, William Smalley. Smalley was captured twice as a young man by indians, once for five years,and served as a guide and translator for almost every indian campaign of the period. Records of General St. Clair's campaign along the Little Miami show Smalley as shooting 21 indians in battle. He also served General Mad Anthony Wayne as a translator at the signing of the treaty of Greenville. William Smalley guided and hunted for the surveying party of Col. William Lytle and was paid seventy five cents a day. Lytle later sold Smalley 600 acres nine miles up Todd's Fork for $200 that he sold after building a house and another grist mill and sawmill on for $5265 in 1833. Smalley was infamous for his odd appearance owing to his indian captors slicing the rims of his ears away from the rest, these hung down off his ears askew for the rest of his life.
A small island splits the river here at the ruins of the old mill, creating a series of riffles. Redworms fished on tiny hooks produce big catches of suckers as they move up on the riffles in early spring. Snaring suckers off the riffle was done alot here in the past also. I've caught several nice smallmouth here fishing a roostertail in the smooth fast water as the river gathers itself in the tail of the big pool above before pouring over these riffles. Some years, depending upon how the river has dug out or filled in the hole over the winter,the eddy below the island can produce catfish on chicken livers pitched in and allowed to drift around the eddy on unweighted hooks.
Right above the riffles and ballfields on the edge of town stands a mighty sycamore but if you walk a few hundred feet further upstream is a true giant, a behemoth that must have been growing here long before the town when mountain lions (called "painters" by early pioneers)and wolves roamed the riverbank.Old records show there was a bounty paid for both in early Warren County history. In William Smalley's time there was also a bounty paid for indian scalps for a few years during the indian wars. The bounties varied from $96 to $135 dollars, enough money to buy land for a small farm. Here around this giant tree is an ideal spot to catch a big carp on a doughball or crappies in any brush you can find in this big pool.
The woods alomg the river here has a few albino squirrels I've seen while walking the bike path that follows the old railbed along the river. The hills then rise sharply and a few small trickles form tiny waterfalls as they fall off the steep bank into the river. If you can pick your way down the steep bank without breaking your neck the mouths of these mini streams form tiny rockbars just big enough for aa adventuresome angler to rest while catching some channel cats. The woods here is especially lovely in spring as it is covered in wildflowers with dutchmen's breeches and trilliums putting on quite a show. In this same time of year the gobbles of wild turkeys also often fill these woods.
Going back to Morrow and heading up Todd's Fork opens up miles of some of the best smallmouth fishing in the state to a wading angler. During summer weekends when canoes fill the river the relative quiet of Todd's Fork can be a welcome escape.
A book could be written on fishing this wonderful stream alone. Just out of Morrow,First Creek joins Todd's Fork almost within sight of town. This delightful little stream has several lovely waterfalls and was followed by the Shawnee who captured Daniel Boone as they took him to villages in Ohio fron Kentucky.







The giant sycamore pictured is in downtown Morrow. It was hard to get an exact measurement because of the vine growing up one side but at five feet off the ground it's somewhere around twenty four feet around!