So we are going to move. One of the places we are considering is close to middle section of the GMR, that Hamilton to Dayton piece of the river. So I'm an LMR guy and just don't know it that well so I spent the day wandering around up there on back roads trying to scope out access to the river. In the Middletown Franklin area I find a place and walk down to the river. The river was very low and a greenish brown, not muddy but more like algae soup. I walk down to check out a big s curve and find a dead redhorse sucker and then another and then another. Everywhere I looked along the middle section of the GMR today there were dead or dying suckers. I guess I saw thirty or forty! I didn't see any other kind of dead fish but suckers and 80 percent of those were redhorse. I called district 5 ODNR and they said they would send someone to check it out but from my decription it sounded like an algae bloom and not a chemical spill, still it was pretty depressing.
So I decided if I was going to fish today It wouldn't be there. Even though I saw no dead smallmouth I figured they have to be stressed so I'm going to stick to the LMR till the GMR gets some rain. So in the evening I head out to an old favorite spot on the LMR. Not expecting much in the heat I bring my flyrod. I might as well enjoy casting. The LMR was world's better than the GMR. Not the pellucid crystal clear it sometimes gets but clear with a hint of green. Not bad at all considering the heat. Right away I have two wildlife encounters that surprise me since it's still early and very hot. First off of a high bank I watch a beaver swim by at about twenty feet and then I round a corner just in time to see something trot across a rock bar and up the bank out of sight. At first I though it was a small deer but it turned out to be a huge coyote instead. Pretty cool. I tie on a black woolybugger and begin to cast slowly working my way upstream. And not catch fish. An hour or two passes and the day begins to turn into evening. A shaft of light, filled with swallows jetting around like miniature fighter planes, shines thru the woods illuminating an area of river about the size of a small room. And in the center of this spotlight fins a carp as long as my leg. I cast the woollybugger five or six feet upstream and it floats by the carp unnoticed. I cast again this time more like ten feet above the fish and the line drifts down even with the fish and then stops, snagged on the bottom. Or at least that's what I think till I lift the rod. The effect is instantaneous. A huge boil five feet across looking like nothing more than a giant toilet flushing erupts where the carp was a split second ago. Luckily the big carp seems reluctant to leave the pool and circles it doggedly till I begin to feel like my arm is going to fall off. After a few false tries I finally beach the fish. Towards dark I manage to catch two small smallmouth as well. One hit with only a couple rods length of line out and took off not so much jumping as much as looking like a stone skipping across the water. For a day that started out so badly it ended very well.
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So I decided if I was going to fish today It wouldn't be there. Even though I saw no dead smallmouth I figured they have to be stressed so I'm going to stick to the LMR till the GMR gets some rain. So in the evening I head out to an old favorite spot on the LMR. Not expecting much in the heat I bring my flyrod. I might as well enjoy casting. The LMR was world's better than the GMR. Not the pellucid crystal clear it sometimes gets but clear with a hint of green. Not bad at all considering the heat. Right away I have two wildlife encounters that surprise me since it's still early and very hot. First off of a high bank I watch a beaver swim by at about twenty feet and then I round a corner just in time to see something trot across a rock bar and up the bank out of sight. At first I though it was a small deer but it turned out to be a huge coyote instead. Pretty cool. I tie on a black woolybugger and begin to cast slowly working my way upstream. And not catch fish. An hour or two passes and the day begins to turn into evening. A shaft of light, filled with swallows jetting around like miniature fighter planes, shines thru the woods illuminating an area of river about the size of a small room. And in the center of this spotlight fins a carp as long as my leg. I cast the woollybugger five or six feet upstream and it floats by the carp unnoticed. I cast again this time more like ten feet above the fish and the line drifts down even with the fish and then stops, snagged on the bottom. Or at least that's what I think till I lift the rod. The effect is instantaneous. A huge boil five feet across looking like nothing more than a giant toilet flushing erupts where the carp was a split second ago. Luckily the big carp seems reluctant to leave the pool and circles it doggedly till I begin to feel like my arm is going to fall off. After a few false tries I finally beach the fish. Towards dark I manage to catch two small smallmouth as well. One hit with only a couple rods length of line out and took off not so much jumping as much as looking like a stone skipping across the water. For a day that started out so badly it ended very well.
