Ohio Trophy Trout Hunter: Mad River CleanSweep

If you build it, they will come!

Conversations can often lead to nowhere, or they can create some of the most amazing moments; instants of time greater than any one person, and certainly greater than one individual could ever imagine.

Bitter cold greeted the Mad River Clean-Sweep volunteers as we began to amass at the rivers edge, and one of these moments in time commenced to being realized…pure greatness!

Trash from 36

Frost covered rubbish soaked and stung the fingers as Ohio weather greeted us with wind-chill temperatures in the thirty degree range, but the Army of ant like volunteers pressed on as if there were no barriers to the mission, rid the Mad River of the abuse she has suffered at the hands of man.

Twenty-one individuals gathered at the Mad River’s 36 Bridge on October 17, 2015, not to fish, but to return the treasured Brown Trout fishery to as litter free as humanly possible.

Got Bike?

Three drift boats covered the river from the 29 Bridge, to the bridge at Eagle City. Simultaneously, three mobile land teams covered the river’s parking spaces from the Pimtown to the St. Paris crossings. This sweep cast the broadest scope of a Mad River cleanup to date, netting 200 square feet of tightly packed rubbish, weighing in at 1750 pounds. One can only imagine the surprise as the payloads began being dropped off, and the realization set in as to how unprepared we were to handle this amount of trash. The solution was to make a mound and return the next day with a dump trailer to haul everything off to the landfill.

Still short by a boat load...

The Clean-Sweep derived from a conversation on an Ohio Trophy Trout Hunter Facebook thread. It was brought to the successful fruition by coordination from many individuals, organizations, clubs, and sponsors. I would like to thank Scott Smallwood, Tom Allen, Don Boysel, TU Mad Men Chapter, Miami Valley Fly Fishers, Central Ohio Fly Fishers, Buckeye United Fly Fishers, Cabelas, Mad River Outfitters, ReelFlyRod.com, and Urbana University for all of their coordination, donations, and members’ support. Most of all, I would like to thank each individual volunteer who sacrificed their day to assist with the first, but far from last, Mad River Clean-Sweep.

Lessons were learned and the future bi-annual events, as well as other planned solutions, should prove to maintain the river in as pristine condition as possible, and do so in a streamlined process.

May you all keep your lines tight, and our waters clean…see you in the Spring for our next CleanSweep!

Please enjoy the pictures...