And not all of them are Hamilton people. Early one morning last week Chris Babel and his fishing buddy Scott Lensch drove to the lower dam from the Cincinnati neighborhood of Oakley to try the Great Miami waters after reading online about the good fishing there on the Ohio Game Fishing Forum.
Babel, an elementary school teacher who works summers at the Bass Pro Shop, was fishing off the bank below the dam.
“This river has gotten a lot cleaner over the last 20 years. I know a guy who caught a couple of 5-pound bass here.
“It’s still not a Montana river, but I grew up in Cleveland where we have a history of dirty rivers,” he said.
Meanwhile, on the dam overlook, Vince McClair, also of Cincinnati, was using chicken livers as bait for catfish — “or whatever bites the hook.”
“I’ve been coming up here since I was about 14 years old,” he said.
His fishing buddy Josh Cannada from McCreary County, Ky., said that the fishing is generally “non-stop” near the lower dam as they teamed up to reel in a buffalo, which they said was like a carp, but bigger and shinier. They said they’ve also caught a few turtles.
Josh Turner, a salesman for the Wholesale Bait Company on Pleasant Avenue, in the same building as the retail Hamilton Bait and Tackle, said the fishing is good around the lower dam because it’s the last dam before the Ohio River.
“So you’re going to find native fish in the Ohio River coming upstream,” he said, citing blue catfish, channel cat, striped and white bass, sauger, gar and walleye being recently pulled from the Great Miami. “The churning water (flowing over the dam) keeps it oxygenated and fish are going to the dam because there’s an abundance of food. It also stops spawning fish from going further upstream and holds them there.
“It’s only about waist deep and is popular for people who want to put on their waders and get in the water. I’ve seen people put a john boat in below the dam, but it’s so shallow there you take a chance of ruining your engine.”
Turner’s boss, Tony Fessel, said that the down economy might also be attracting people to the river for cheap entertainment.
“A lot more people are into fishing in the river because it doesn’t cost anything,” he said. “All that’s required is a license if you want to do some bank fishing,” which is $19 for an adult Ohio resident. “Families can take their children down there for a family outing,” Fessel said.
“And you might catch a little dinner in the process,” Turner added. “Years ago, they said you wanted to limit your consumption of fish in the river, but the fish are healthier and thriving. It’s not as dirty as it used to be.”
The Ohio EPA suggests that people should eat no more than one meal per week of any fish caught in Ohio.
“And you can fish anywhere in the city on the river without worrying about trespassing, which is a plus and unique to the city of Hamilton,” Turner said.
Later that evening, Fairfield resident Rick Massie was slipping his 17-foot john boat off the ramp at Combs Park near the upper dam. He said he likes fishing the waters upriver toward New Miami because with the tree-lined banks “it’s more like being out in the country” and because there’s more bass up that way because the water is deeper.
He said he’s been fishing on the Great Miami since he was a kid and still likes to get out on his boat “once a week, I’d like to say, but more realistically once every other week.”
He, too, has seen an improvement in the number and kinds of fish in the river, but complained about the blue herons that have become more and more common over the last decade, especially in the creeks that feed into the Great Miami.
“Every bend you go around, you’ll see three or more heron,” he said. “They’ve pretty much depleted the larger fish. A bird like that, they have a field day.”
Dusty Hall, manager of program development for the Miami Conservancy District, said the Great Miami River has become increasingly healthier and more abundant with wildlife since revisions to the Clean Water Act in the 1970s increased the regulations regarding industrial waste that was once pumped into its waters. Conservationists doing a check for species near Dayton recently discovered a pike, a fish that is particularly sensitive to pollutants.
And while the low level dams may provide nice pools of water for fishing and other recreational activities, many conservationists are against them and are trying to get communities to use other methods of controlling the water.
“They believe that rivers should be free-flowing,” he said, “but the dams create more lake-like conditions and cause more sediments to settle.
“The Conservancy owns the dams, but we’re willing to go along with whatever the community decides is appropriate for them,” he said, “and if they want to remove the dams (and replace them with other water-control measures), we can work with them on that.”
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