August 26 2007, Chagrin River, Cleveland
Just a couple of days ago on the shores of Lake Erie an angler told me that he loves fishing for steelhead in the Chagrin River. Now I’m wading in it – but the wrong time of year for steelhead. What surprises me is the size of this river: only a couple of casts across, and mostly calf-deep with the deepest pools perhaps four or five feet deep. The river is green-clear with three or four feet of visibility, and its bottom is mostly rocky and pebbly – not muddy.
This is a perfect-weather Sunday afternoon, and my car claimed the final spot in the Chagrin River Park’s lot, but the other park-goers are here for picnics and dog-walking and jogging and just enjoying the out-of-doors – not fishing. I can see at least a mile of river up- and downstream, and there are no other anglers. Before I waded in I looked down on the river from an upstream footbridge and saw clear, shallow water with no fish: no smallmouths, no little bluegill, no carp, not even any minnows. It made me wonder what’s in here; I’m of course brand new to this water and my knowledge is nil.
To get to my wade-in spot I walked a path bordered by a meadow of wildflowers: purple Hortons, blue daisies, pale lavender morning glories, tiny smartweed, mini-fried-egg asters, purple violets, yellow cornflowers. My heart quickened as I came upon the river and waded in among its seemingly virgin vista.
I see them immediately: schools of two-inch minnows, pale green ghosts in groups of tens and twenties and more. I have no idea what kinds of predator fish are in this river, but they have plenty to snack on. I start with a four-inch finesse worm on a sixteenth-ounce jighead and begin my downstream wade. (River waders always have this dilemma: up- or downstream? I choose downstream because the park’s footbridge and the underbridge waders and sand-players are upstream.)
This surely does look like smallmouth water. It even smells like smallmouth water – like Nashville’s Harpeth River from my teenage years with live crawfish. And, like the Harpeth, this stretch of the Chagrin is surrounded by homes and roads and civilization – all unseen from my midstream wade. But I do see clues: there lodged on a midstream gravel bar is an old bicycle frame, and not three feet from it is a golf ball. And the river’s bottom and shoreline – throughout the mile or two that I will wade today - are littered with red bricks and concrete building blocks and pieces of river glass and river porcelain.
I work my finesse worm along a swift shoreline run that’s a bit deeper than where I stand in the middle. On the third cast I get hung in an overhanging branch, but then the rod throbs and I realize that it’s a fish. I reel in a beautiful little smallmouth – perhaps ten inches - strong and healthy and green. So this is a smallmouth river!
A bit further downstream I work the finesse worm through the downstream current of a deeper little pool: cast cross-current and then slack-line the worm as it tumbles downstream across the bottom, waiting and watching for a twitch in the line. The twitch happens and I set the hook and reel in another ten-incher. Then another. Fifteen minutes and I already have three smallmouths; this is going to be a glorious outing.
I look downstream and see endless opportunities: pools and runs and shoreline shadows. River waders are always anticipating what’s next. I slosh through a long stretch of ankle-deep river on the way to the next hole.
I see a mussel shell the size of my palm – bright pearly white. Then another. Near it is a piece of river porcelain with a drawing of an Asian woman. River porcelain and river glass are simply broken and discarded pieces that have had their edges rubbed finger-smooth by the river’s tumblings. Janet and I have collected river glass from the James River; the prizes are the pieces that have numbers or letters or other markings. River porcelain is not common in the James, but it is here in the Chagrin, and before my wade is complete I will have pocketed a dozen pieces of smooth porcelain, all with patterns and pictures.
My worm goes fishless for a half-hour so I switch to a Panther Martin minnow, first the small size, then the larger – with no bites on either. Then back to the worm.
I come to a stretch of river that is floored with the slickest stuff I’ve ever stepped on. It’s bare, smooth rock of some sort, without any growth of slick algae, and it’s even slick on the soles of my special sandals that have a track record of mostly perfect grip. I don’t want to fall in. I don’t mind getting wet or hurt, but I don’t want to drown another cell phone on a fishing outing. (This would be number four.)
Somehow I get across the slickness and arrive at a long deep pool that’s bordered with fallen logs and overhanging trees. Perfect water for all sorts of fish. But my worm, then a Senko, then two different crankbaits, all go fishless and biteless.
The shorelines here and along the rest of the river are lined with three-storey trees, lush weeds and underbrush, and rushes and watergrasses. I remember wading similar stretches of the Harpeth with Ramsey Woods who always caught four-pound smallmouths while I caught one-pounders. I always threw a little Mepps which caught lots of small fish; Ramsey patiently threw a big Rapala. So I now switch to the big boy: the huge Lucky Craft Pointer that has worked so well for me on largemouths.
I throw the Pointer upstream and cross-stream and downstream through several deep pools and across knee-deep currents. It receives no interest. It casts a long way and while retrieving it I scan the pebbled bottom for porcelain. I am reminded of the Ohoopee – the long-ago south Georgia sand river in which I waded and from which I collected shards of Indian pottery. Mostly on dry sandbars, the spoonsize pieces were flat and curved and showed parallel rows of ridges. I would find some during every wade.
The fish don’t bite. Those three I caught early on are the only ones I will catch today, but they propel my hope for more than an hour downstream and then back up. River waders are always perplexed about turning around and heading back. There is always one more good spot to try. There is always one more good pool in the distance. There is always one more fish that jumps just out of casting range.
On the way back as I collect more porcelain, I round a bend and look up and see two anglers: bank-sitting, bucket-toting, line-watching, nasty-word- spewing, aluminum-can-drinking types.
“Catchin’ any?” I hail them as I approach. (My only route upstream is by them and their bucket.)
“Just one small one,” says one of them – surprisingly nicely.
“Any advice for smallmouths?” I ask. “This is my first time on this river.”
“They’re under the rocks,” is the reply.
I don’t dawdle or ask for photographs or interviews, but as I wade purposefully by I do learn that they’re using live crawfish and have had no luck except for the small one that they released.
I round the next bend and the next one before I get to within site of my starting point. Before exiting the river I find and collect a huge, Bible-size piece of river glass: a couple of inches thick, rectangular, with smooth-melted edges and swirls of mesmerizing surface patterns. Back at the hotel I wash and scrub and dry it and begin to see images within the surface patterns – not manufactured images, but images stemming from that same portion of the mind that sees things in clouds. In yesterday’s newspaper I read that some fellow had sold on e-Bay a Madonna-imaged thing that he had found. Back home in a few days I will ask Janet to help me look at my piece of river glass; we will continue to look and look and look.
Just a couple of days ago on the shores of Lake Erie an angler told me that he loves fishing for steelhead in the Chagrin River. Now I’m wading in it – but the wrong time of year for steelhead. What surprises me is the size of this river: only a couple of casts across, and mostly calf-deep with the deepest pools perhaps four or five feet deep. The river is green-clear with three or four feet of visibility, and its bottom is mostly rocky and pebbly – not muddy.
This is a perfect-weather Sunday afternoon, and my car claimed the final spot in the Chagrin River Park’s lot, but the other park-goers are here for picnics and dog-walking and jogging and just enjoying the out-of-doors – not fishing. I can see at least a mile of river up- and downstream, and there are no other anglers. Before I waded in I looked down on the river from an upstream footbridge and saw clear, shallow water with no fish: no smallmouths, no little bluegill, no carp, not even any minnows. It made me wonder what’s in here; I’m of course brand new to this water and my knowledge is nil.
To get to my wade-in spot I walked a path bordered by a meadow of wildflowers: purple Hortons, blue daisies, pale lavender morning glories, tiny smartweed, mini-fried-egg asters, purple violets, yellow cornflowers. My heart quickened as I came upon the river and waded in among its seemingly virgin vista.
I see them immediately: schools of two-inch minnows, pale green ghosts in groups of tens and twenties and more. I have no idea what kinds of predator fish are in this river, but they have plenty to snack on. I start with a four-inch finesse worm on a sixteenth-ounce jighead and begin my downstream wade. (River waders always have this dilemma: up- or downstream? I choose downstream because the park’s footbridge and the underbridge waders and sand-players are upstream.)
This surely does look like smallmouth water. It even smells like smallmouth water – like Nashville’s Harpeth River from my teenage years with live crawfish. And, like the Harpeth, this stretch of the Chagrin is surrounded by homes and roads and civilization – all unseen from my midstream wade. But I do see clues: there lodged on a midstream gravel bar is an old bicycle frame, and not three feet from it is a golf ball. And the river’s bottom and shoreline – throughout the mile or two that I will wade today - are littered with red bricks and concrete building blocks and pieces of river glass and river porcelain.
I work my finesse worm along a swift shoreline run that’s a bit deeper than where I stand in the middle. On the third cast I get hung in an overhanging branch, but then the rod throbs and I realize that it’s a fish. I reel in a beautiful little smallmouth – perhaps ten inches - strong and healthy and green. So this is a smallmouth river!
A bit further downstream I work the finesse worm through the downstream current of a deeper little pool: cast cross-current and then slack-line the worm as it tumbles downstream across the bottom, waiting and watching for a twitch in the line. The twitch happens and I set the hook and reel in another ten-incher. Then another. Fifteen minutes and I already have three smallmouths; this is going to be a glorious outing.
I look downstream and see endless opportunities: pools and runs and shoreline shadows. River waders are always anticipating what’s next. I slosh through a long stretch of ankle-deep river on the way to the next hole.
I see a mussel shell the size of my palm – bright pearly white. Then another. Near it is a piece of river porcelain with a drawing of an Asian woman. River porcelain and river glass are simply broken and discarded pieces that have had their edges rubbed finger-smooth by the river’s tumblings. Janet and I have collected river glass from the James River; the prizes are the pieces that have numbers or letters or other markings. River porcelain is not common in the James, but it is here in the Chagrin, and before my wade is complete I will have pocketed a dozen pieces of smooth porcelain, all with patterns and pictures.
My worm goes fishless for a half-hour so I switch to a Panther Martin minnow, first the small size, then the larger – with no bites on either. Then back to the worm.
I come to a stretch of river that is floored with the slickest stuff I’ve ever stepped on. It’s bare, smooth rock of some sort, without any growth of slick algae, and it’s even slick on the soles of my special sandals that have a track record of mostly perfect grip. I don’t want to fall in. I don’t mind getting wet or hurt, but I don’t want to drown another cell phone on a fishing outing. (This would be number four.)
Somehow I get across the slickness and arrive at a long deep pool that’s bordered with fallen logs and overhanging trees. Perfect water for all sorts of fish. But my worm, then a Senko, then two different crankbaits, all go fishless and biteless.
The shorelines here and along the rest of the river are lined with three-storey trees, lush weeds and underbrush, and rushes and watergrasses. I remember wading similar stretches of the Harpeth with Ramsey Woods who always caught four-pound smallmouths while I caught one-pounders. I always threw a little Mepps which caught lots of small fish; Ramsey patiently threw a big Rapala. So I now switch to the big boy: the huge Lucky Craft Pointer that has worked so well for me on largemouths.
I throw the Pointer upstream and cross-stream and downstream through several deep pools and across knee-deep currents. It receives no interest. It casts a long way and while retrieving it I scan the pebbled bottom for porcelain. I am reminded of the Ohoopee – the long-ago south Georgia sand river in which I waded and from which I collected shards of Indian pottery. Mostly on dry sandbars, the spoonsize pieces were flat and curved and showed parallel rows of ridges. I would find some during every wade.
The fish don’t bite. Those three I caught early on are the only ones I will catch today, but they propel my hope for more than an hour downstream and then back up. River waders are always perplexed about turning around and heading back. There is always one more good spot to try. There is always one more good pool in the distance. There is always one more fish that jumps just out of casting range.
On the way back as I collect more porcelain, I round a bend and look up and see two anglers: bank-sitting, bucket-toting, line-watching, nasty-word- spewing, aluminum-can-drinking types.
“Catchin’ any?” I hail them as I approach. (My only route upstream is by them and their bucket.)
“Just one small one,” says one of them – surprisingly nicely.
“Any advice for smallmouths?” I ask. “This is my first time on this river.”
“They’re under the rocks,” is the reply.
I don’t dawdle or ask for photographs or interviews, but as I wade purposefully by I do learn that they’re using live crawfish and have had no luck except for the small one that they released.
I round the next bend and the next one before I get to within site of my starting point. Before exiting the river I find and collect a huge, Bible-size piece of river glass: a couple of inches thick, rectangular, with smooth-melted edges and swirls of mesmerizing surface patterns. Back at the hotel I wash and scrub and dry it and begin to see images within the surface patterns – not manufactured images, but images stemming from that same portion of the mind that sees things in clouds. In yesterday’s newspaper I read that some fellow had sold on e-Bay a Madonna-imaged thing that he had found. Back home in a few days I will ask Janet to help me look at my piece of river glass; we will continue to look and look and look.
Photo: John Bryan holding Chagrin River smallmouth
