An Unknown Stream, A Man And His Fishing Pole

Sometimes you just have to find out. That thought had been going through my mind for a few weeks. That's because sometimes on Sunday mornings I have to take my son to meet his mother in Franklin, Ohio. I do this so I can work at my job for a few hours.....

After I drop my son off, I take Interstate 75 North back up to Beavercreek, Ohio. Now after you get on the interstate about 100 yards north on your right hand side you will see a stream. Now your going going about 70mph and this is a construction zone so there are orange barrels that you have to watch for.You only have a quick moment to notice there is a stream, a very small, slow moving pretty little stream....and it screams "small mouth bass live here"....

Now I passed this stream 4 times, before the next Sunday morning I could not take it anymore, and as I crossed the bridge I had to quickly smash my brake peddle and pull over without hitting one of those damn orange barrels. I did just that, pulled off the interstate onto the shoulder, a bit into the grass, perfect. Stepped out of the truck, and gazed at the on coming traffic wizzing by me at 70mph, grinning....I pulled out from behind the seat of my truck my fishing vest, and a bass rod.....gonna hit this unknown stream...I have one hour before I need to go to work which is only 20 minutes up the road. So thirty minutes to peek at this Unknown stream and maybe wet the line...I am like a little kid in a candy store...buzzing with excitement.

I quickly made my way down the steep embankment, heading towards the stream flowing under the bridge......First thought was how clear the water is in this stream.....The stream was about 15 yards wide and clear as a bell... the deepest this part(under the bridge) of the stream was maybe 3ft....some minnows swimming around....I need to go upstream where the bends in the stream where. The ones that I could see from the interstate. The ones that drew me to this point I am at now. So upstream I headed....have to go threw the bushes and trees...

The bend in the stream was what I think of as a normal bend for these parts....the shallow side had a small sandy area, the other side was the side with the hole and a couple of downded logs. This is where I thought I might get lucky.....Now I could see it, this area, so pretty....I need to see if there is a bass over there....I am standing at the edge of the woods, and I need to drop down the embankment where the water had once cut away the bank....maybe a 5ft drop....Now there I am, in my work clothes....black dress shoes....ready for work....sneaking thru the woods....probably tresspassing, just wanting to check out a small stream....maybe catch a smallmouth bass...the ground before me looks dry....so I jump down....and my feet shoot out from under me and my ass hits the ground....I quickly push myself up and take a step into mud, that I had thought was dry ground...I take a few steps and look down at myself...mud covers my shoes up to my shins....my left arm is a muddy mess and so is the seat of my pants...all mud...and I have to go to work......thats the bad news...good news is the stream is right in front of me and I am on the bend that i had been viewing from the road all those times....it is pretty...more shallow that I had thought it would be....but I have a small section I might as well fish...this stream might hold a few...I don't catch any in this small area, not with the jig I had brought..but I have to get back to my truck...gotta get to work and somehow get cleaned up....don't have time to get home and then to work....shit!!!


........ok so I climb out of there...make it back to my truck....guess what?....Can't find the keys to my truck....they were in my back pocket when I slipped in the mud and landed on my ass.....I know thats where they are....gotta re-trace my steps and go find my keys...gotta get to work....covered in mud....all because I had to find out about this damn stream.....

....call me crazy, stupid...whatever.....I made it to work...I found out something about that stream...I have a good story to tell....

Go Fish

New Video Clips

Been real bust fishing lately....have had to use my camera on my phone here are a few clips....

Great Miami River 8/29/11

What a great day. I dropped my son off at school at 8am and headed over to the river. it was a very cool morning and the sun was just burning off the clouds. I parked my truck, put on my gear, waders, boots, and vest. Rigged my line with a white curly tail and spinner....caught 3 very nice small mouth bass. 2 were very big. My buddy met me on the water and caught a couple as well, including a nice channel cat....just like i did last week....

Great Miami River

August 23rd, 2011

Went smallmouth fishing yesterday in downtown Dayton, Ohio. Chose to fish the area around Riverscape. This is where the Mad river Dumps into the Great Miami. This is a really pretty area, and makes for a great backdrop for some awesome urban fishing. This river is really full of fish and it really fished well. I was targeting smallmouth bass. and I caught a lot of them yesterday in just a few hours. But towards the end of the day I caught a channel cat, going 5lbs, on an old spinner bait I use for smallmout. The cat was in the current feeding and nailed my lure like a freight train. I guess he thought he was bigger and badder than he actually was. Because I brought him in on my 5ft. UL, with 4lb test Floro......awesome ending to a great day....now GO FISH and tight lines

Cranberry River 2011

.....and we went again. This is a reoccurring theme for us. We hopped in the car last Sunday July 24th. It was pouring down rain....which put us a bit behind. So we finally got rolling about 3pm or so towards West Virginia....we were hell bent on doing some trout fishing.
..... We didn't get to the top on the Mountain until about 10pm. It had done some raining in this neck of the woods as well.....so we camped at the top of the mountain, next to the car......gonna hike in at daybreak.....that we did.
.....We got down to the river in quick time the next morning, July 25th.....found a shelter along the river and strung up our Hammocks.....made camp in like 20minutes and got our fishing stuff ready and headed out....


.....now summer fishing on the streams can be terrible. The water in usually low, temps are up, and the fish tend to be spooky as hell....and all this was true, the conditions sucked which meant that one or both of us should have gotten skunked....but that was not to be the case....I fished pretty hard that day landed 3 nice trout and lost about 3 others....not bad for that time of year.....Marshall land 5 or 6, and also lost a couple....pretty good day no matter how you looked at it.

.....What saved us was the fact that is was over cast and rainy that day. We did a lot of hiking and fishing...

Lots of wildlife on this trip....turkeys and deer....then on the morning of the 26th, before our hike up the mountain we had a visitor from a black bear who walked through our camp early in the morn....I got that on video....he just passed by and went along on his route to wherever....very nice.

Tight lines....go fish.

Fishing In The Snow Part 2.

This is yet another clip from our Fishing Adventure on the Mad River in West Liberty, Ohio. This is a little clip of Marshall "Cranberry" Hamden catching and releasing a nice Brown Trout.

Wishing I was Fishing

Well, this video talks a little about fishing. But, there is no fishing really going on in the video. Just me running my mouth and my son getting crazy on his 4wheeler. We went out and enjoyed the first "Real" snow of the year. This was on Saturday Dec. 4th. 2010. Pretty good day all in all. Check it out.

The StillWater River - West Milton, OHIO

Canoe Fishing, is one of the best ways to take on a river. When searching for small mouth bass, floating by rip rap and rocks in a canoe allows you the chance to cover more of the river than you could by wading it. It's fun, great exercise, and a great way to spend the day.

This is what we did Tuesday August 7th 2010. We drove up to West Milton, Ohio. Rented a canoe from the local Livery, and floated 5 river miles downstream. Casting soft plastics, spinners, and jigs. Soft plastic 4inch worms seemed to work the best that day. But a few were taken on inline spinners as well.

My buddy and I took out my 5 year old son. It was a great day, the fishing was a bit slow, but just being out there made all seem well.

Video Of Our Drive Into The Cohutta Wilderness

A few weeks ago my buddy Marshall and I went to North Georgia to hike into the Cohutta to do some trout fishing on the Conasauga River. I blogged about this, but at the time no video was ready to post. Now I have it ready, or should I say I have Video part 1 ready. I will be posting the other videos soon. You can check out all our videos at youtube. www.youtube.com/riverhunters
Oh, by the way, there is some bad language in this video. Might not want kids to hear some of this foul language.

Little Miami River Canoe

I just wanted to post this little video I put together of oour trip down the river. This was a lot of fun.