Conewago Creek @ York Haven Dam, York Co.

[JakesLeakyWaders]

I fished the mouth of the Conewago today in shorts and Sandals, if you are not familiar with it, it is trecherous to wade on the jagged and slippery rocks and uneven streambed. I was happy to see however that there were many Smallmouth fry swimming around. I hooked several of them in the 3 to 6 inch range. They all looked to be very fiesty and healthy.

I also had one 20+ inch carp and a larger channel cat take a nip at my brown bugger. I almost hooked the carp as it sucked and spat out the bugger, just missed it. The catfish however was barely visible on the bottom as I tried to drift the bugger in his lane. I finally got the drift and it turned as if thinking where did it go, I twitched it about a foot and it charged towards my bugger and stuck it's fins out as if putting the brakes on and took one nip just on the maraboo tail and then turned and swam away and disapeared in about 5 feet of stained water.

After missing a 2 foot cattie and a half decent sized carp I was so wound up that every little bass fry I hooked after that got sling shot out of the water towards me leaving some slack line. I had to laugh at myself cause I kept imagining I large fish at the other end of my line teasing me, just nibbling on the end of my streamer.

The good thing though is that I'm happy to see all the healthy young of the year bass around and I hope it stays that way.

 

[JackM]

What condition was the stream in? Did you get a water temperature? Any hatches present?

 

[JakesLeakyWaders]

The stream was slightly murky you could just see down about 2 or 3 feet. I did not take a temp, I don't often carry it with me. I leave a lot of gadgets at home during summer months. I did see a lot of damselflies. Other than that I did not see any thing coming off.

Of course if you don't know the history of the stream, several decades ago the last two miles of stream was diverted frow it's original course which emptied near Saginaw along Gut Rd.
A new channel was blasted to divert the course of the stream and now it flows North in the opposite direction of it's original flow and now empties into the river several miles upstream from it's original ending point.

Because the Channel is manmade, much of the last mile or so is very hard bottom with many jagged rocks that have not been smoothed into round stones from hundreds of years of water flowing over them. There is not a lot of sediment fine pebbles or habitat for the kind of hatches you might find elsewhere.

Often while wading near it's mouth you will come across large boulders that had been drilled through in order to move them by crane. The stream was diverted to make way for the Bruner Island coal burning power plant, near York Haven.

Although much of the original streambed was dozed over near the power plant, you can still see the original streambed along Gut Road. However, trees have begun to grow where water once flowed and there is merely a small dingey trickle running between it's original banks coming from a small tributary that used to flow into the Conewago, but now only meanders a pathetic course all the way to the river within the overgrown banks where the Conewago once flowed.