Its name means crooked river. Clevelanders know it as the burning
river. The Cuyahoga earned the nickname
burning river because the water on the river caught fire. While it caught fire at least 13 times in its
history, the Cuyahoga River claimed its name after the 1969 fire brought the
river into the national spot light as the most polluted river in the
country. That fire resulted in the Clean
Water Act and the creation of the EPA.
Just south of where I live we have a wonderful natural
resource, Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The park has been there my whole life, when I was younger it was a
National Recreation Area. In 2000
Cuyahoga Valley was upgraded to a National Park. I’ve driven through the park to get to places
like Blossom Music Center or Peninsula Ohio, but I have never hiked around or
fished in the park. The Towpath Trail
runs through the park along the Cuyahoga River from Akron to Cleveland.
I’d always avoided fishing the Cuyahoga because its
reputation for being polluted. A few
years ago I began to hear stories about people fishing the Cuyahoga for
steelhead and more recently for small mouth bass. After hearing about huge small mouth caught
with big crayfish sticking out of their gullet I decided I had to go fish the
crooked river that caught fire years ago.
My wife came with me.
She walked the towpath trail while I fished the river. I was surprised at the size of this
river. It is big water, actually huge
water compared to the upper Chagrin where I normally fish for small mouth. I covered about a quarter mile stretch of
water rather quickly since I only had two hours before I was supposed to meet
my wife at the car. I accessed the river
at a bridge near the parking lot. I
fished under the bridge and down river a bit where I caught a 10” smallie. Ok, I got the skunk off, but it was not an
impressive fish by any means. I walked
up stream and around the bend to where a braided section of river came back
together. This water looked very fishy,
I was sure there was a huge bass lurking in there. I tried everything. I swung and stripped streamers. I dead drifted and slowly stripped crayfish
through the pool. I even fished poppers
on the seams and near the rocky bank. I
only had one fish follow and refuse a foot away from the rod tip. I just couldn’t catch a fish.
I made sure I was back at the bridge where I started about
10 minutes before I was supposed to meet my wife. I called her to see where she was, she was
about 15 minutes away. I decided to fish
the up-stream side of the bridge where I only devoted a couple of casts when I
began fishing. I caught another
smallmouth in the soft water between the bank and the bridge column. I released the fish and continued to work
that area. Something smashed the
crayfish fly and pulled hard. I felt a
few head shakes, saw a flash of bronze and the line went limp. I lost a huge smallmouth!! I put several more casts into the area, but
that fish was not going to be fooled a second time. The phone rang as I was changing flies. As I answered the phone I dropped the fly in
the water losing it, I reeled in my line; it was time to go.
The National Park is beautiful and the Cuyahoga has a
healthy population of smallmouth. I
managed to catch a few fish the first time out.
I will definitely be back. There
is so much to explore and miles of new water to fish.
