Susquehanna River, Dauphin Co. 8-10-14

krayfish2

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Floated from Duncannon to Ft Hunter. Launched around 8:30 and took out at 3:30. Suffered severe sun burn. LOL. Water in the mid 70's, slight stain. Pretty quiet for the first half of the float. Fishing picked up about the mid way point. Hooked / lost 10+ at long distance before actually manually unhooking one. After knocking the skunk off, landed 15-20 including 2 fish in the 19-20" range. Lost an absolute giant after he went airborne 4 times. All of the big fish came in a 300 yard section that looked to be void of good cover or holding water...go figure. Yeah, I cheated and fished floating rapala. No takes on double tube fly streamer set up so I lost interest.
 
Great report...I always have wanted to fish the Susquehanna in that area. Is it generally pretty deep? Driving by that stretch, I've noticed that islands and channels that surround them look pretty inviting. Most reports I hear or see seem to favor spin fishing.
 
During low summer flows, you can wade. With that said, I've never seen anyone wade out without taking a spill. It is typical to smash your toes, bloody your shins, bang an elbow, etc. Around those islands you will find BRUTAL wading. I did it for years and used 3.1' or less on Harrisburg gauge as my wading flow. You can fly fish and have good success. I was ha ing combo of arthritis and tendonitis so spin fishing was more user friendly. I did see one bass spook that was 4 pounds, a few big suckers and several big carp. The flow is quite high compared to normal flows at this time of year. It's also been stained where the clarity is usually 3'-4' in late summer. Bring that raft and have a go.
 
Damn topwater. I haven't been able to buy one. Nice!
 
Here's a couple pics from Sunday. The photos don't do the 2 big fish justice.
 

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I fished near Liverpool Saturday evening. It was dead, the white flies are on the downside (I reckon) and I only saw two fish looking up.
 
Good report - nice to see some action with some very nice fish on that section of river.

Do you think the white flies are over (or nearly so)? There were a lot of mayflies at the gas station on 11/15 when I stopped by this evening...but there are always bugs at these places in summer - not always the best indicator of what's happening out on the river.
 
We saw some small stenos and tiny sulphurs left over from the previous nights hatching. I'm sure there's bugs almost every night but I haven't seen anything like the hatch a few weeks ago. What's strange is that I've historically seen the white fly was in this area between August 7th - 14th. I'm assuming the blitz of flies I saw a few weeks back was a rogue hatch. With the above normal flows, might not be a normal hatching.
 
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