# Cuyahoga River for catfish?



## richgriffin (Oct 25, 2010)

First time rigging up for catfish in Cuyahoga River. anyone fish for them there? any tips appreciated, focusing on Summit County area. bait? what types of areas to look for? not looking for specific fishing spots! catch n release- just after the fight! I usually fish Silver Creek Lake for them.


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## fredg53 (Sep 17, 2010)

They are throughout all the rivers. My goto bait shrimp and garlic got literally hundreds on that last year. Pm me if u have any questions

_OutdoorHub Mobile, the information engine of the outdoors_


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## RiverDoc (Mar 12, 2010)

richgriffin said:


> First time rigging up for catfish in Cuyahoga River. anyone fish for them there? any tips appreciated, focusing on Summit County area. bait? what types of areas to look for? not looking for specific fishing spots!


Nothing wrong with giving a spot, near Whiskey Island. Be careful after dark!


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## MogadoreRez87 (Feb 14, 2009)

its great for smallies and pike but Id skip the hoga for cats. Youd have better luck in local reservoirs, mogadore, portage lakes,ect. and i wouldnt eat anything out of that river. try the tusc for big cats


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## tornwaders (Oct 2, 2007)

define big cats. the bigger cats are further south, phily and below. Canal Fulton to bolivar have some nice channels and a few fish ohio but not whoppers by the hand full.


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## johnboy111711 (Apr 7, 2004)

Torn, what part of the river is that? not to familiar with it


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## tornwaders (Oct 2, 2007)

new philadelphia


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## johnboy111711 (Apr 7, 2004)

Oh i thought we were still talking about the cuyahoga River


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## freyedknot (Apr 10, 2004)

harvard rd in cleveland gives up some dandy rodbenders.


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## [email protected]#$carp (Aug 29, 2010)

I have catfished in the C Falls area. Have caught decent numbers of catfish on chicken liver.Have never caught any huge ones though.


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## creekcrawler (Oct 5, 2004)

I always seem to find the catfish a little downstream from where the smallies are, in the slightly slacker water.


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## bdawg (Apr 14, 2009)

I have yet to catch a channel cat in 12 years of fishing the Hoga in Akron, C. Falls, or Monroe Falls! And I usually fish with live bait. Either minnows or half a night crawler for smallies and pike. I have caught a few mud cats and bowfin around logjams. My dad caught a nice 5lber in the Edison Pool, but that is the only one I've seen caught. I've hooked into plenty of carp though while smallmouth fishing.


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## creekcrawler (Oct 5, 2004)

Yeah, I don't know about the Akron section.
Every once ina while I run into nice channels, but that's the lower sections below the 82 dam.
Got blown off the lake a few years back and did real well parked right behind the Nautica Queen in the flats. Even got a nice sized _flathead._


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## bdawg (Apr 14, 2009)

Not surprised to hear of them being caught below the SR 82 spillway since it's connected to Lake Erie. Has anyone ever caught any north of Cuyahoga Falls?


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## jmackey84 (May 15, 2010)

i went last year to that turn off right on front street by the jumping bridge, dident even get a niddle, my buddy said down in the valley the river has some channels and bullheads but nothing to big from what he has told me


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## McMish (Mar 23, 2009)

i hooked into what i thought was a nice sized cat behind brandwine golf course last summer.

Never saw what it was casue it was too muddy.
It drug my line over a rock and snaped it.


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## jiggin'fool (Dec 18, 2005)

you would think there would be some good cats around waterworks and by the sheraton.... and above the gorge.... never tried it but lots of slow deep water!


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## collinwoodie (Sep 23, 2005)

"...Id skip the hoga for cats. Youd have better luck in local reservoirs, mogadore, portage lakes,ect. and i wouldnt eat anything out of that river."

With all due respect, how can anyone in this day and age of vast sources of credible information and readily accessable government info (ODNR, EPA,DOW) say something like this?
For the record, the Upper Cuyahoga (above Edison's Gorge Dam)has tested cleaner than many area reservoirs-including Mogadore-for decades.Whereas northern pike, for example, notorious for needing cold, clean habitat, not only thrive in the Cuyahoga, they reproduce, and have done so for many years.Repeated attempts to get northerns to simply survive in places like the Portage lakes, Mogadore, and 
Berlin to help improve the panfish populations have repeatedly met with quick failure.
As someone who grew up just up the street from the Gorge, I can tell you the catfishing in that pool is legendary.My picture of a 22lb. channel caught off the bridge there on a shiner hung in the Tackleshack for years among many other big cats, including some blues taken there.
Further you go up river, the shallower and less productive the catting gets.


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## AkronCATS (Nov 5, 2008)

Rich Griffen, are you fishing from a boat or bank fishing?


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## fishingful (Apr 5, 2004)

bdawg said:


> Not surprised to hear of them being caught below the SR 82 spillway since it's connected to Lake Erie. Has anyone ever caught any north of Cuyahoga Falls?


i havent caught one but have seen channel cats between kent and monrow falls. spook them out of the shallows while kayaking last year


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## homeworker (Oct 3, 2005)

Does anyone remember the cafish tournaments they had down there in the 90s? We used to go down and watch the weigh-ins.Some incredible catches. Recall the guys used to fishing at Mogadore, P.Lakes and other area lakes regularly regretting bringing too light of line and always a few rods got snapped or dragged in.I remember Tom Melody of the Beacon down there to cover it, lots of boats and cars and trucks coming and going afterwards from the Gorge lot.Fun days and nights.


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## bdawg (Apr 14, 2009)

I've never heard about those tournaments and I've been living close to there for 12 years. Not very many places you can fish there except for under the bridge and from the new fishing pier. The cat my dad caught was from a jon boat that we hauled over the guardrail. We rowed all the way upstream to the end of the pool before he caught it. I've seen lots of carp in the pool while hiking there.


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## SGPitman (Apr 23, 2008)

when i was younger, way before i new anything about cat fishing, me and a small group of friends would fish the river all the time. one of us had a small boat and a truck. we would take the boat down the driveway at the Edison building, over the rail, and into the river. one guy would take all the gear in the small boat down the river and pull onto shore while the rest of the group walked the trail. when we all got to where the boat was we would go down the hill to the river and 1 by 1 the boat would come accross the river to get us. we would fish there for days at a time leaving the truck at the park right by the edison building. I have caught a lot of cats in over 20 years of fishing but Ive never caught cats like i did back then on the river. best place ever.


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## Bobinstow90 (Apr 13, 2006)

People who troll Erie for walleye, get hits with 6-10lb cats regularly, especially in spring in skinny water.

Best as I can tell.......no one has really hunted big cats in Erie. River mouths....including the hoga......might be the best locations.

Anyone interested in serious Lake Erie cattin......drop me a PM.

Good luck...be safe out there.


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## just perchy (Jan 16, 2005)

catch many perchin the last few years, prior to that no so much. i can usually expect 3 to 4 per trip, usually 20 to 30 inches in size.


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## homeworker (Oct 3, 2005)

Since an earlier posting on this thread gave a wildly inaccurate impression about water quality and fish consumption on the Cuyahoga-particularly lumping the upper section with the lower (Akron-to-Cleveland) as if they're both the same-it might be time, with the introduction of the Erie catfishing option, to remind viewers that the catfish in Lake Erie TRULY have warnings on consumption of any and all of them in any amounts, and the warning is among the most severe ever listed by the state.


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## I_Shock_Em (Jul 20, 2008)

collinwoodie said:


> "...Tackleshack for years among many other big cats, including some blues taken there.
> .


Blues????? I have a hard time believing this. Any factual information to back this statement up?


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## homeworker (Oct 3, 2005)

Veteran Falls river rats have long been aware of blues in the Gorge, I've caught perhaps half a dozen over the years myself. 
Fish-Shocking stats on that part of the river were made available at the mentioned tackle store that posted them back in the 80-90s on their bulletin board, a useful and eye-opening service at a time when some people still thought of the upper Cuyahoga as as polluted as the part of the river that goes into Lake Erie.
We got our own copies from the Twinsburg EPA office for our club, and one guy's son actually did a college paper at KSU on the subject, using that infur contact was my buddy's friend there-Steve Tuckerman, who actually provided us free bound volumes on the entire river, and blue cats were listed in Edison, as we knew they would be.
Interestingly, they were never found elsewhere in the river to my knowledge.


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## MR ED (May 31, 2006)

I would catch them at fred fuller fishing for carp. Had alot of fun.


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## Pole Squeezer (Jun 21, 2008)

I helped a guy in a wheelchair land a 10.5 pound cat at waterworks park 2 years ago. The coloration of it looked to be like a blue cat. He was carp fishing with bread balls, from the little pier at waterworks. He had a digital scale and we were able to weigh the cat. He took pictures, and we released it. The water quality in the upper cuyahoga from edison on up to rockwell should be greatly improved after the munroe falls dam was torn down. In fact, I'm thinking that the fishing should be much better this year in that stretch of river. Last spring, to kill some time, I took an ultralite and cast tiny jigs into the rapids where the dam was, I caught 40 small 4" crappie, and perch at that spot, and would have caught more if i hadn't ran out of jigs. Hopefully those crappie I caught might be a decent size now.


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## bdawg (Apr 14, 2009)

That's really surprising to here about blue cats in the Hoga! I'll be most people that catch them, confuse them with channel cats cause the look so similar. I've met Steve Tuckerman on a work related issue before. He's very knowledgeable about the river. I believe he has since retired from the EPA. 

I personally would not keep anything out of the Edison pool. Since it has a power plant right next to it for years spewing coal dust and what not, I don't know If it will ever be clean enough for me. My dad ate the channel cat that he caught out of there and said that it was awful. Probably a great place for catch n release cat and carp fishing though! 

Pole squeezer, I'm not surprised to hear of you catch a bunch of crappies in that area. There is a pond downstream that always has lots of crappie in it and is directly connected to the river. I've only caught small crappie out of there though. Had a pike smash a crappie imitating lure in that pond once!


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## joshohio (Mar 17, 2011)

I pretty much exclusively fish for Carp and Cats. The river is my go to spot for either fish. I have luck in and around Kent in the Deeper Pools for Catfish, and from the Kent Dam to Middlebury Rd. Bridge for Carp.I have caught some Butterball Carp in the Kent stretch of the river. The dam lower pool sometimes has small Cats, but ever since they "fixed" the water flow issues, the lower pool gets stagnant and too low to hold any cat longer than your shoe.

The river is a little high for my liking yet, but when it comes down a little I'll be out during the week scouting for new cover and checking old holes to see whats holding fish. 

I just moved up to Hiram, and this stretch of the river is very new to me. Anyone know of any place up here where I can bank fish? Public access?


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