night out

I find if I camp for any length of time on the river I begin to see just how little we know about how things really are. Safe at home, it's easy to make broad statements and know it all. Things like. "Well there's crayfish in the river and smallmouth eat crayfish so fish crayfish imitations". But in real life, out in the real world, I find my mind filled with unanswered questions. What are those bugs hovering over the stream in a cloud? What are those dimples midstream? Are they chubs or shiners or something else? And those tiny mud colored commas, are they tadpoles? Camped along the river I find first a dozen things that might affect the fishing. Then a hundred, then my mind reels under the realization there might be thousands.
  If camping on the river shows us how little we know it also inserts into that world, at least for a while. For a few days our little fire ring becomes a capital for our new found kingdom. Camp is our Pequod from which we lower away each day to chase our own personal white whales. Every morning we sally forth to new adventure and retreat to the safety of firelight every night. Each morning we sally forth to new adventure and retreat to the safety of firelight every night.
  But the longer I stay at a place the less strange the night. As I fish thru twilight into darkness the landscape becomes less imposing and more familiar after a few days. Indeed after a couple days of spending all day every day at one camp and one stretch of river, it becomes at least temporarily a home of sorts. Then the night, so daunting just a day or so before becomes a new adventure. Big fish stir. Shallow pools, vacant of life during the day, fill with life. I jump, scared silly, as huge fish spook out of the shallows at my approach.
  I begin to know the river in a way the day fisherman never will. The small tent, the fire ring, the log that serves as both table and chair, all stake a more serious claim to the river. Till finally, stinking
of mud and fish, I stagger home sunburned, happy, and bugbit. Only to find my own bed feel a little strange at first.
  Camped, I begin to realize this one place is many. Like any beautiful woman the river is full of mystery and changes moment to moment. The lovely clarity of morning light gives way to the glaring mid day sun. Which in turn then softens into the sensual forgiving light of a long evening. All to then be covered by the blanket of night. Sound, like the light, changes. The refrain of bird noise that greets the sunrise ends mid morning without our somehow noticing. Till we hear the first calls of evening followed by the trills of frogs as the shadows of night come slipping thru the trees.
  If I'm there. On the river a while, more than a day, I find myself doing what the other animals do, spending a lot of time sitting and watching. Seeing things as they really are before we change them simply by blundering thru oblivious.
  Then after catching a fine fish this way somehow it means more. You have insinuated yourself at least partially into the environment. And then having caught something using wit and reason rather than just pounding the fish into submission with cast after cast. Or at least I like to think so. After catching a couple good fish you begin to feel you are a crafty bastard. Sometimes it's even true.
  I do not often keep fish. But once or twice a year while camped on the river I will. Evening will be approaching and the fish god will offer a channel catfish or a good saugeye. Fishing is at it's essense a predatory act. Only recently have we had the luxury of turning fish loose. Those few fish baked by the fire make the circle of life a reality and not just an intellectual exercise. I find myself looking into the darkness and unselfconsciously thanking the river.
  Camped, I find the earliest religions, the Druids and the Native Americans concept of us all being part of a greater whole in nature makes sense. Out here more than our modern religions. I once described a section of a small river I like to a friend. And then added that about a half mile wade upstream is where God lives. I was only half kidding.

Cranking out the catfish

I looked up just as Dan's rod bowed into a half circle with line screaming off the reel. Ten minutes later I snapped his photo with a twenty pound shovelhead. I watched as he released the fish and I started back down the bank. I hadn't made it thirty yards when I heard a whoop and turned around. There he was fast into another big fish his rod bent double once again. It turned out to be another shovelhead just a bit bigger then the first. The most amazing thing about these two nice fish wasn't that they were caught on back to back casts. The amazing thing was that neither was caught on live bait, or any sort of traditional catfish bait for that matter. They say that seeing is believing and I listened intently as Dan told me about the big cats he had been taking regularly on crankbaits. Now almost everyone who fishes alot has caught an accidental cat or two on lures but this was something different, something I had to try. And after experimenting with this new way of catfishing for a year now I can tell you it works. In the last dozen trips alone I've caught fifty six shovelheads ranging from five to thirty pounds plus at least that many bonus fish such as channelcat, smallmouth and drum. The only lure I throw when trying to catch a shovelhead is a lipless crankbait. You know, the flat, pointed on the ends ones filled with BB's that there are dozens of versions of on the market. The nice thing about it is that shovelhead don't seem to care which one you use as long as it's loud, the louder the better. In fact it seems the cheaper ones might just be the best. Walmart and BassPro both sell a discount crankbait in the two dollar range that seems to work as well as anything. If you pick it up and shake it in your hand and you sound like your playing maracas in a bad mariachi band it's probably perfect. I dont really worry much about color either. Shovelhead have small eyes and dont use eyesight as their main sense in the way a bass or a trout does. Shovelheads rely on two other senses, their amazing sense of smell and another overlooked sense. You see catfish are particularly atune to vibrations in the water making them able to feed on the darkest nights or in muddy water. When a big cat is cruising the shallows at night looking for dinner, that big vibrating crankbait may not smell like dinner but it moves and sounds alive and an agressive cat will nail it. I guess the future of this kind of fishing might be a crankbait that smells like a shad or some other small fish. As generations of noodlers will tell you, shovelheads spend a great deal of time backed up under heavy cover like an underwater ledge, a log, or a tangle of tree roots. But shovelheads are ferocious predators that prefer to kill their food rather than scavange off the bottom like other catfish species. Late at night that shovelhead that spent all day in an undercut bank is now out on the prowl looking for an unsuspecting meal. The key to catching them consistently is finding the places where several big cats congregate when searching for a meal. The very best spot we've found to tangle with a big cat on a lure is below a lowhead dam in a small to medium sized river. The dam concentrates food and often has a large population of hungry shovelhead cruising around hoping for a meal. A dam in a smaller river is not so huge and doesn't have the powerful currents of a big dam on a river like the Ohio or mississippi to deal with. While these dams hold lots of huge cats, most fisherman rely on two or three ounce lead weight just to keep their bait in place and getting your crankbait down to the fish is almost impossible. But in a smaller river you can cover the water completely insuring that a hungry cat will eventually encounter your lure. It's been my experience that a cat will cruise the whole area below a dam looking for food and you might hook up anywhere though A couple areas do seem to produce the best. I try to throw right up against the dam if possible as there is often a nice cat or two right where the water pours over. If the dam throws up a rock bar below the scour hole pay particular attention to this especially late at night. Minnows often come up extremely shallow here to escape predators and the shovelheads follow. Its not uncommon late at night to hook up almost right under the rod tip. When a twenty pound fish smashes your lure at four in the morning right under your nose be expecting it, it would be easy to be startled so bad you drop your rod! I try to form a mental picture of the riverbottom below the dam and keep the rattlebait moving just fast enough to tick the bottom every now and then. My basic retrieve ia alot like you might use if swimming a jig or plastic grub right along the bottom. In the deeper water of the pool you will have to count the bait down on a tight line before beginning your retrieve. I've had them hit the bait on the fall so be sure and keep a tight line. Since catfish rely mainly on other senses than their eyesight I will use as heavy a line as I can and still feel and work the bait well. Usually ten or twelve pound mono during the day and twenty five pound braid at night. Plus the greater break strength of the braid helps me lose a few less lures to the bottom. Heavy mono deadens the action of the plug and the greater diameter lessens the depth the lure will run so stick with braid at night. The other place besides a dam that this technique will net you some fish is right below a riffle if the hole itself has plenty of cover and depth to hold shovelheads in. Complex riffle/hole/riffles that include a bend or s curve in the river or where the riffle pours around both sides of an island are almost always much better than simple riffles. Expect the fish to be in either the run right below the riffle or just like below the dam cuising any shallow rock bars late at night for small fish. One of my better spots I found after catching a 12 inch smallmouth that had a large scaled ring around his midsection where he had narrowly escaped a big cat in the past. The fish are often very shallow and since they can feel any vibration easily it pays to be stealthy and not stomp up and down the bank knocking over rocks. For this reason and for safeties sake learn a spot thoroughly during the day before attempting to fish it at night. I will also turn away from the water when switching on a light to tie on a new lure. In spring and again in fall when the water cools shovelhead will feed actively during the day and you can catch just as many fish in daylight, but in the heat of summer nighttime is the right time for this action. The beauty of this fishing is it's simplicity. All you need are a half dozen lipless crankbaits, a rod and reel with some backbone and a good drag and nerves of steel...

MILEAGE CHART Little Miami Bike Trail

LMI Preserve

Since it is close to my home, I've spent a few days walking the Finley Preserve learning the plants that inhabit this spectacular woodland. Although I in no way claim to be any sort of botanist I do think I have built up a decent profile of the plants on this ridge above the Little Miami.





As you first enter the preserve there is a brushy transition zone between the soybean field and the woods. Almost all the common field edge plants you might find in Southern Ohio are here including teasel, black-eyed susan, goldenrods, ironweed,
milkweed, plantain, timothy, several asters, oxeye daisy, dock, burdock, chicory, dandelion, trumpet vine, smartweed, queen anne's lace, and orchard grass. In the woodline there are a couple small cedar trees which I've seen no where else on the preserve in addition to some mulberry, locust, and walnut. The main understory tree/shrub here is the amur honeysuckle though it hasn't completely crowded out eveything else like elsewhere along the river.



Once you enter the woods the land drops off steeply into a deep hollow which you must cross to reach the ridgeline that overlooks the river. This ravine is covered in a spectacular mature woods. Large beech, maple and oaks predominate. The plantlife is varied and all the woodland plants you might expect are there and then some. A few of the more interesting plants include goldenseal, twinleaf, bloodroot, mayapple, twisted stalk, hepatica, false solomenseal, wild leek, rue anemone, various fern species, varigated waterleaf, trillium, blue cohosh, and wild ginger. In places the wild ginger forms a carpet on the forrest floor and is the most common herb on the preserve. There seems to be at least fifty ginseng plants in this hollow with most of those being less than ten years old. The young age of these makes me think this is a newer population recovering from harvesting in the past. I'd consider planting some seed to help speed the process. Baneberry is also present here in about the same numbers as the ginseng. Baneberry or dolleyes contains a powerful compound which could slow a persons heart or even stop it if say a small child were to ingest the pretty white berries.

The small creek which flows thru the bottom of the hollow has a couple sycamores along it but no giants as you might find further downstream in the river bottom.
Just downhill of the preserve an entire bank of the creek is covered in waist high ferns. Thru the preserve pawpaw is the dominate understory plant creekside with a few patches of nettle where more sunlight penetrates. Once leaving the preserve the creek makes a beeline downhill crossing the remains of the old Waynesville road before hitting the river just above fishpot ford.



Climbing out of the hollow to the ridge line large mature trees cloak the ridge. At one time it looks like this might have been a pasture as the remains of an old barbed wire fence can be found. From the size of some of trees it must have been open woods though instead of field. Nowadays the woods has completely swallowed every trace of this except for the barbed wire. Even this is very old and looks nothing like modern barbed wire. This wire is called "Allis' Mediuim Width Buckthorn Ribbon" by collectors and has a patent date of 1881. Close to the old fenceline I found an old medicine bottle which by the mold lines pressed into the glass also seems to date from the 1880's. As most of the "medicines" contained alot of alchohol I can imagine it being tossed into the bushes by whoever had to string the barbed wire. The ridge itself is very flat on top then drops off steeply towards the river.









The tip of the ridge closest to Red Oak Road roughly overlooks the upper end of fishpot ford. Fishpot got it's name from John Sublette, one of the first settlers in the area, who built a large stone trap just above the riffle here to catch fish. Sublette was famous as a hunter and trapper in a time famous for hunters and trappers and hunted bear and mountain lion on these ridges overlooking the river. The Shawnee also trapped the river for the booming fur trade and by Sublette's time
(1780's-90's) beaver were already becoming scarce and he caught one of the last in the river along here. Fishpot itself is a large S curve in the river containing two small islands and extensive shallows making the river easy to cross. The ford was used by Gen. George Rogers Clark and Gen. Josiah Harmar as a crossing on their campaigns against the Indians and was the site of some minor fighting as the Indians harrased the army.








The hillside from the old Waynesville Road up to the ridgeline is a mirrow image of the hollow you first cross when entering the preserve except in places there seems to be a bit more honeysuckle. Both the hillsides and the ridgeline have numerous large downed trees that serve as nursery logs for plants and a wide varity of mushrooms.
I'm sure I've missed a few tree species as some trees are just too large and the leaves so high that its hard to see them well but here is at least a partial listing:

sugar maple
beech
tulip poplar
basswood
ash
red maple
hophornbeam
black cherry
shagbark hickory
shellbark hickory
white oak
red oak
bitternut hickory
pawpaw
viburnum
redbud
dogwood
chestnut oak
cedar
mulberry
sycamore
walnut
locust
amur honeysuckle
In the springtime I'm sure a list of wildflowers would be much larger as some kinds die back in summer and some are very inconspicuous when not in bloom. I've list some under general heading such as just "goldenrods" or "trilliums" as it is hard for me to ID them when they are not in bloom. A very incomplete listing of small plants and herbs includes:
wild ginger
jack in the pulpit
ginseng
bullbrier
sticktight
jewelweed
goldenseal
toothwort
false solomenseal
trilliums
hepatica
mayapple
jewelweed
smartweed
rue anemone
twisted stalk
twinleaf
ramp
queen anne's lace
white clover
red clover
dutchman's breeches
spring beauty
wild geranium
ground ivy
trumpet vine
virginia creeper
sweet cicely
rattlesnake fern
marginal fern
christmas fern
maidenhair fern
multiflora rose
pokeweed
banneberry
varigated waterleaf
poison ivy
wild grape
brome
burdock
chickory
oxeye daisy
dandelion
dock
wild garlic
goldenrods
ironweed
milkweed
stinging nettle
orchard grass
plantain
teasel
timothy
white vervain
blue cohosh
squawroot
violets
bellflower
bergamont
fleabane
asters
wood sorrel





















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A bit of Todds Fork history

If you fish much on Todds Fork you are bound to run unto the remains of one of the old railroad bridges spanning the river. Some you can see easily from the road but others like the two that carried the railroad across the great horseshoe downstream of Middleboro Road towards Roachester Oseola can only been seen by those willing to get off the beaten path.

The Cincinnati & Muskingum Valley Railroad ran from Morrow thru Wilmington, Washington Court House, Circleville, Zanesville and Trinway. The C&MV was incorporated in 1851, and was completed from Morrow to Zanesville by 1856. bankrupt only seven years later, the line reorganized into the Cincinnati & Zanesville. In 1870, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) took control over the C&MV, and extended the railroad to Trinway. In 1911, the C&MV consolidated into the Cleveland, Akron & Cincinnati Railroad (CA&C). In 1924, the Zanesville Division was absorbed by the PRR Cincinnati Division, which consolidated into the Pittsburgh, Ohio & Detroit Railroad one year later By 1968, the line had become the Morrow Branch, Zanesville Branch, and Twinway Branch of the Pennsylvania Central Columbus Division.
The line west of Wilmington was dismantled in 1976 when the southern end, the Little Miami railroad, part of the Pennsylvania's Cincinnati & Xenia Branch, Cincinnati Division, was abandoned. Unlike the Little Miami which was turned into a bike trail,
this road was simply abandoned and everything from old spikes and ties to these gorgeous old bridges abound. From what I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong, there were six of these big main bridges on the Fork,

Some old timey plugs

Some old fashioned plugs I carved out of basswood. The finish is just painted on with a brush, it would have been better with an airbrush I'm sure but I'm pleased with them. The last two have a crackle finish to add to the old timey look.