Five River Metro Parks is a park district formed in 1963 in Montgomery County. The Metro parks organization currently consists of 24 different park facilities and approximately 16,000 acres of parkland, river corridors, and pathways. In 1994, the Board of Metro Park Commissioners adopted 
a “Greenspace” policy to maintain 80% of its land holdings in a natural state while allowing only 20% to be commercially developed for community recreation, education, and conservation.
In 2002, Five River Metro parks along with the Miami Valley Conservancy District co-sponsored a new Miami Valley Stream Team program to monitor the quality of water within the park system. This program was created as a result of funding restraints, and staffing shortages, which prevented collection of necessary data used for trend monitoring, the primary test method used by the Stream Team.
An initial training class for the 2004 Stream Team involved the use of a kick seine net for stream monitoring. I pulled up six crawdads on my first attempt. I ask Mike Enright, (Wildlife Biologist), if
he knew crawdads were selling for $6.75 per/dozen? He just laughed.
A few weeks ago, I stopped at Angler’s, Englewood, Ohio (my favorite bait store) to pick up some night crawlers. I noticed only one container of crawdads ($6.75/doz) in the cooler. A few days later I decided just for fun why not try it? Only, there were none to buy. The cashier said they couldn’t keep them in stock for people were buying them as fast as they got them in. Things that make me go HMMmmmm…….
Remembering my Stream Team experience, I bought some wire screen 2 x 5 ft and a 1 ¼ - inch dowel 4 ft long, all for under $10.00. I cut the screen and dowel both in half and used two cheap belts to wrap over the ends (prevent cuts to the hands). I stapled the screen to the dowel and had new crawdad equipment ready to try out.
It was September 2, and I only had a few free hours left in my schedule because I had company coming over at 5:30, so I picked a gravel launch site close to home. I caught a crawdad the first time I used my new net. I was so excited…. like a little kid. I caught two more crawdads and decided to bait up and put one out there. After just a few minutes, Wham! It’s a bass! I just couldn’t get over it!
I pulled out the cell phone to call one of my fishing buddies, told her about the bass, and convinced her into bringing her pole down there. Then some craziness happens. She gets her line snagged in a tree, yanks real hard trying to get it loose, the line snaps and flips the lit cigarette out of her mouth, up into the air, and hits her in the eyeball. Oh my god, I can’t believe this is happening! We grab our stuff and head for the doctors office. We were lucky her doctor was still in and could see her. He gave her some numbing drops and a shot to ease the pain. The Doctor called an Optometrist, requesting immediate care. Last time Shelly went to the doctor was a year ago when she got a fish hook stuck in her leg, had to have the hook removed, and no, I wasn’t with her, and she wasn’t even fishing!
Two days later, Shelly’s right eye still blurred from the accidental burn, and slowly healing, is not enough reason to miss out on putting the crawdad theory to test. One week previous I had caught my biggest smallmouth on a live night crawler, and I couldn’t wait to try out a crawdad in this same fishing spot. Would you look what happened!!!
