Susquehanna River, Dauphin County 8/6

[Woolybugger]

The Miller Hatch is still on in the Susquehanna. A trillion bugs in the water, but no fish swirling at them. I fished from dark until about 10:00 and got skunked again!! A couple small fish approx 4" were swimming around, maybe young chubs, but no bass or channel cats eating the flies.
In the last 5 trips I made to the Susquehanna, only one Thursday had any bass hit my white flies.
Very frustrating again. Thank God I caught a couple bass with my fly rod last Thurs.......... I'm about ready to give up on the Susquehanna.

Highlight of the night was: around 10pm, when I was heading in, I saw crawfish catching the white flies with their pinchers. They would stand on their hind legs and snap their pinchers when a dead Miller floated by. Amazing, even the tiny 1" crawfish were trying to catch the bugs. Check out the last two pix. In the middle pic, the bottom crawfish is eating a Miller!

Drought and "heat advisory" tomorrow....... I think I'll look for some cold water next week. It's been a while since I caught a trout.

​

 

[LehighGuide]

Neat pics bugger. That's one of those cool things that you rarely get to watch like a stonefly hatching or a steelhead digging a redd.

 

[tomgamber]

rising crayfish...I could get into that...gumbo time!

 

[Squaretail]

Great photos. Nicely done.
You're not the only one ready to give up on the Susky.

 

[jaybo41]

Great pictures, thanks for sharing. Those are some big crayfish! :-o

 

[troutbert]

Amazing! I'm betting not many people with Phd degrees in aquaticd ecology know about that!

For a long time I've believed that fishermen learn stuff that no one else knows. Yet another example.

 

[LehighGuide]

Let's not give up on the Susky, just be realistic about what's happened/happening and that it needs protection and time to recover. Most fisheries, including infamous fisheries in Alaska and Montana, are cyclical and they all have their bad cycles. How about the Tully? Not half the fishery it used to be. The Lehigh? It now has amazing trout fishing when it used to have little or none. I am hopeful every year that I am going to have good fishing on the Susquehanna because it's such a beautiful river and maybe someday soon we'll all be able to fight some bronzebacks there again.

 

[flyfishermanj]

Bugger,

VERY nice pics, thanks for sharing. I really hope the Susky mystery gets solved soon. I understand that fish populations are cycical, but what's going on out there seems too unnatural to me. Really regret not fishing the Susky when I had a chance a few years ago.
JH

 

[LehighGuide]

Unfortunately, a down cycle on a fishery is sometimes not a natural thing but in the case of the Susquehanna I wonder how much of it is a man made problem. You see the reports of bacteria levels being to high, sewage problems, etc but many rivers have these problems and the fish do not seem to suffer too much. I really think this problem started a few years back and continued for a few years where there were floods and major rain events during the spawn which were scouring to say the least. I can remember three years straight when the river was unfishable during the spawn because the water was just too high. The bacteria that caused the fish kill in 2005 was a common water borne bacteria not something introduced through sewage or farm runoff. The problem was escalated by very low flows and very high temperatures with very low dissolved oxygen levels. All of these are natural factors. So the smallies really had about four years of major hardships and this year isn't shaking out too much better with the flows and temps. I just don't buy the pollution thing as much as some people play it out to be when I see incredible amounts of crayfish, white flies, tricos, hellagrammites, etc. But then again I'm not a biologist, just someone who spends too much time on the water.

 

[sandfly]

maybe with all the crawfish runnin around, swith to a clouser crawfish...the bass might be keyed in on themm..I know here on the pine they are..

 

[Woolybugger]

Lehigh,
I agree that rivers go in cycles....... but for the last four years it just keeps getting worse! Seems like we've been in the down cycle for a long time. But maybe this rain might help a bit. Maybe going way upstream next week, maybe north to Lake Erie!

Flyguy,
When you posted that you wished that you fished the Susquehanna more in years past, it brought back so many wonderful memories. That's what makes it so terrible to me. It used to be "world class" smallmouth fishing only ten years ago.

100 days were common, even 200 ! I started with grubs and rapalas and then switched to woolybuggers and marabou streamers. I used to have a Bass Tracker Pro 17, but wading was much more fun. I would rather catch 100 bass in 3' of water wading with a fly rod then catch 200 bass in a boat in 8' of water with a spin rod. But I'm only after the fun of fishing, not the fillets. A medium sized smallmouth bass that hits a home tied fly is such a wonderful thing.

Mother Nature is a powerful thing. What we need is more water and more oxygen. I'm hoping the rain will continue and the fall bite will be like it used to be........ but I've always been a dreamer.

 

[LehighGuide]

Bugger,
I agree that it has been getting worse and worse. Look at it from this perspective. We had several, successive years, 3 years straight I think, of high water/floods during the spawn cycle prior to 2005 and then in 2005 the fish kill. I was there when all the yoy smallies were starting to float belly up and it was sad. That's a heapin' load of problems for the smallies and maybe it will take several years to recover from several years of hardship. Maybe we haven't seen the worst of it but this is what I believe we're dealing with:

1. Several years of poor spawn - loss of several year classes of fish.

2. Fish kill - Loss of mostly older and younger bass . We caught a marginal number of "middle aged" smallmouth during the kill that appeared unaffected but yoy and lunker bass were almost always infected.

3. We now have a more sparse population of larger smallies, that have very little competition for an unbelievable amount of food.

Think about all of the crayfish in the river right now, I've never seen so many, how many of these does a smallie need to eat a day and how can I convince him to eat my Chartreuse and White Clouser Minnow which is completely unnatural looking instead of all of these live crayfish? I think any smallies left in the river can eat a crayfish whenever they please and that's just one of the many food items that are available to them and this situation is bad for the angler and worse for the fly angler but it is very good for the bronzeback if spawning conditions are favorable. Does anybody know if they did and electrofishing/surveying this year to determine how well the spawn was? I would like to see this. I thought last year's spawn seemed to be good, there wer lot's of small bass in the fall maybe a few years of that and we'll be back in business.

 

[shipnfish2006]

Barring any major fish kill or flood or anything like that this should go down as the best spawn in a LONNNNNNNG time. In the 3 times Ive been on the river this year the YOYs have been out in big numbers, too bad they cant fit my flies or twisters(yeah i had to switch to the dark side to catch the 'eyes) in their mouth. The river isnt all that bad this year further north at least the walleyes are keeping me entertained.

 

[LehighGuide]

I agree wholeheartedly Ship. There looked like a decent number of fresh smallies this summer, as I thought there was last year, and hopefully they'll all get recruited into the gaps.