Cascade Valley Metro Park, Akron OH 2 JAN 2017

[CybrSlydr]

Some of you may have seen in the Northwest Fishing forum I posted about going here to see if we might be able to snag some trout or LMB.  Today, my brother and I went to try it out.

 

We left around 9:30am, bit of a later start than we wanted, but it is what it is.  It's just over two hours to drive there from our house.  We stopped at Taco Bell in Cambridge to grab some breakfast and then headed up to Gander Mountain in North Canton to pick up some supplies with money we got for Christmas.

 

Got my brother some Berkley 8lb Nanofil for his setup, I got both of us an electric green 1/4oz inline spinner Rooster Tail, some Berkley Power Bait for Trout (green kind) and we both grabbed some Frog Toggs waders and two pairs of wool socks - http://www.froggtoggs.com/cascades-2p-rubber-bootft-26808.html   Must have been on sale as we got them for $80.  I also picked up a Rapala scale/fish lipper combo.  I was thinking that since the park site said you could catch pike that I didn't want to deal with teeth and figured a lipper would be great to pair with the long-nose pliers I already had.

 

So, we arrived at the first location and realized it was nowhere near the Cuyahoga river.  So, we used our phones and Google Maps and went to the next one.

 

Unfortunately, we didn't really... plan smartly for what to wear under these.  I DID bring my Army issue waffle bottoms to wear over some sliding shorts I have from baseball, but I didn't want to change into them and just wore my jeans and a the wool socks.

 

BIG MISTAKE.

 

Jeans rode up to mid-calf or higher on both of us, though we made it work.  We now know how to better prepare to wear the darn things.  Tight, thin layers underneath or something like gym shorts.  Compression shorts to prevent chafing as well.

 

Good news is the waders worked as advertised - we made it to the Cuyahoga and got in near the shore.  Unfortunately for us, the river was super fast today.  It looks like we're around the tail-end of the snow melt, so the river was really high too.  We made about 5 casts before looking for a new spot.  Bad news is we were on a time crunch as is so we spent the vast majority of the time we were going to fish hiking the Oxbow Trail (btw, protip: figure out what the trail signs are before you go - two wavy lines apparently doesn't mean "to water" like I assumed and might just be the trail icon... d'oh) and made it to the "scenic view".

 

 

You can also see it was completely foggy too.  The whole dang day, it's been foggy and lightly misting.  In the low 50s/high 40s, so it was chilly.  Not in those waders and a hoodie walking up and down the darn trail it wasn't.  lol  We were both soaked with sweat.  Eventually I took off my hoodie and just carried it.

 

By the time we got to the scenic view, we'd pretty much run out of time to fish and had to be on our way home.  We were both pretty bummed - yet another strike-out fishing outing, hours away. 

 

Here's our route.  Blue is the outbound route, green is when we circled back to try and reach the Oxbow pictured above and orange is the return route to the car.

 

 

As with Mohican park - looks like it'd be a great place to fish in the spring once the river level is much lower and slower.

 

Someday, somehow - we will catch a d**n fish...

[Darren.]

Looks like a cool area!

 

Better luck the next time you guys go out  

[CybrSlydr]

Man, as often as we've struck out, the amount of "better luck" we have accrued should land us a pair of 20lb LMB!

[TnRiver46]

That's a cool looking river, if there are stocked trout in there you can catch them no matter how cold it gets. They like it cold and they like those rooster tails you bought 

[CybrSlydr]

1 minute ago, TnRiver46 said:

That's a cool looking river, if there are stocked trout in there you can catch them no matter how cold it gets. They like it cold and they like those rooster tails you bought 

 

What kind of water level/current do trout like?

 

The water was really, really high and moving very fast.  I threw a weightless texas-rigged fluke just to see how the current was and it wouldn't stay submerged for more than a few seconds. 

 

Do you know of any good resources on where to look for trout in that kind of river?  Thank you. 

[TnRiver46]

The I caught a couple trout yesterday in 8,000 cubic feet/second. With the boat in neutral I think I was moving downstream almost 3 mph. Basically the river was 9-14 ft deep and moving super fast. by comparison I'm guessing that river in the photo is moving at a maximum of 1,000 cfs, probably less than 500. Flowing water is a conveyer belt of food to a rainbow trout, they Can sit effortlessly in heavy current and pick out food items. The key to catching them is to cast and cast and cast and cover water keep your eyes peeled, you can usually see them or see them surfacing. If there is a decent population of trout in there, one will eventually follow a spoon or spinner 

[CybrSlydr]

33 minutes ago, TnRiver46 said:

I caught a couple trout yesterday in 8,000 cubic feet/second. With the boat in neutral I think I was moving downstream almost 3 mph. Basically the river was 9-14 ft deep and moving super fast. by comparison I'm guessing that river in the photo is moving at a maximum of 1,000 cfs, probably less than 500. Flowing water is a conveyer belt of food to a rainbow trout, they Can sit effortlessly in heavy current and pick out food items. The key to catching them is to cast and cast and cast and cover water keep your eyes peeled, you can usually see them or see them surfacing 

 

So, should we look further down-stream for them?  On what kind of areas do they like to stack up?

[TnRiver46]

I suppose it all depends on the frequency and volume of fish they stock. Normally I would say they can be most anywhere, they love riffles and rapids. it's usually not too difficult too work your way upstream and cast everywhere along the way. Trout always face upstream so approach them from below, although that's not 100% necessary. If they don't stock a whole lot or very frequently, then I would fish as close to where they stock them as possible 

Looking at that photo I would

fish the fastest riffles first, then that log, then everything else