Susquehanna River, Lancaster Co., 10/21/17

[Dave_W]

WEATHER: Blue bird skies with highs in the 70s.

WATER: 3.2' at the Harrisburg gauge, gin clear, 60 degrees. A few boaters and yakkers but not a lot of activity.

HATCHES ETC: Nothing significant. A few scattered bugs, no rises; large schools of small minnows around 2" in length around shoreline areas. No crayfish seen. One bass caught in a riffle today had multiple caddis larva in his mouth and gullet. These caddis were dark colored and about #16.

Teamed up with Afishinado today to put some autumn hurtin on the Susky bass.
We arrived at mid day about 11am and fished until 5:30pm. It was a tough day. The bright sun and very clear water seemed to have the river switched off. We fished some very good sections with little success. Around 4pm, with the sun lower in the sky and softened by haze, the river seemed to wake up. We found active fish in fast water, mostly along current seams but also in shallow riffles. I had expected to find SMBs around ledge rock and and deeper tailouts today, but these spots didn't produce. The active fish were in pretty fast water. Had luck high sticking a helgy nymph and swinging a Clouser. I tried poppers briefly with no success. I managed about eight fish with three in the mid teens. Afish got fifteen bass with one at 18 inches.

A very nice day to be outside, but fishing was sub-par for what I'd expect on the big river in October. Nevertheless, with water levels still quite low, if you're a wading angler, the Susky is in great shape for FFing right now.

 

[afishinado]

Great day out with Dave Weaver. The weather was great and the flow was just perfect for wade fishing, the water was as clear as you'll ever see for the River. Overall the fishing was a little slow by Susky smallie standards, but things picked up a little late in the day.

The fish, the active on anyway, seemed to be holding in the mid-velocity areas near the riffles. I caught most of my fish on a plain old bugger and nearly all hits were when swinging without stripping and hanging in the current. Not a lot caught, but nearly every fish was a decent with many 14"up to 18".

Great day to be out, the warm weather has hung around a little later this year.

I love the change of seasons. Time to break out my Salt Water tackle and hit the shore.

 

[Mike]

That particular stretch of the river gets much, much better close to shore as the river gets higher at this time of the year. In fact, we are in a holding pattern right now with respect to the electrofishing survey of SMB at the fixed site on the Accomac stretch until the river rises by about another foot or so. We have much experience with low flows and better flows there and the change in near-shore SMB numbers is dramatic when the river rises above these present low flow conditions.

 

[Fredrick]

afishinado wrote:
Great day out with Dave Weaver. The weather was great and the flow was just perfect for wade fishing, the water was as clear as you'll ever see for the River. Overall the fishing was a little slow by Susky smallie standards, but things picked up a little late in the day.

The fish, the active on anyway, seemed to be holding in the mid-velocity areas near the riffles. I caught most of my fish on a plain old bugger and nearly all hits were when swinging without stripping and hanging in the current. Not a lot caught, but nearly every fish was a decent with many 14"up to 18".

Great day to be out, the warm weather has hung around a little later this year.

I love the change of seasons. Time to break out my Salt Water tackle and hit the shore.

About time ................ Its albie time

 

[The_Sasquatch]

Dudes...I'm like, 10 minutes from there. Send me a PM next time.

 

[Mike]

This may have been the storm that we were waiting for. Watching the river rise very closely, as this may have been the storm that will bring large numbers of good size SMB, as well as carp, channel cats, and flatheads close to shore in the Accomac area. Happens every year around this time. Your tip of the day.

 

[greenghost]

Nice Dave! Thanks for the post. I haven't been out this fall for smallies. Your post inspired me. On a side note, it's amazing that on 10/21 there seems to be very little color in the trees along the shoreline.

 

[Dave_W]

Yeah, the tree colors here in SCPA are not very impressive this year. In addition my camera isn't the best at capturing the subtleties of color in the landscape.

Don't give up on smallies yet this year, there's still some very good river bass fishing for the next month.

 

[Dave_W]

Mike wrote:
This may have been the storm that we were waiting for. Watching the river rise very closely, as this may have been the storm that will bring large numbers of good size SMB, as well as carp, channel cats, and flatheads close to shore in the Accomac area. Happens every year around this time. Your tip of the day.

Hhhmmm.....
Very interesting. Thanks for the tip of the day.

 

[afishinado]

Mike wrote:
This may have been the storm that we were waiting for. Watching the river rise very closely, as this may have been the storm that will bring large numbers of good size SMB, as well as carp, channel cats, and flatheads close to shore in the Accomac area. Happens every year around this time. Your tip of the day.

Hey Mike,

Too much of a good thing :-o

 

[Mike]

Yes, you'll need to catch it on the down side, just like us. We expect to be out next week for the last sampling run, but we sample at night.

 

[Mike]

Still muddy all of the way across at the RT 30 bridge this afternoon.

 

[The_Sasquatch]

So a cold front pushes through, but the river is dropping and clearing up. What does that do for the bass fishing? I've never chased smallies this late into the Fall before.

 

[afishinado]

The_Sasquatch wrote:
So a cold front pushes through, but the river is dropping and clearing up. What does that do for the bass fishing? I've never chased smallies this late into the Fall before.

A cold front usually puts the smallies in a funk. Wait a day or two for the fish to acclimate...and go fishin'!

Try everything, but generally "low and slow" is better than "high and fast" in colder water temps.

Good luck...post a report.

 

[Mike]

Good thing you said "usually"puts them in a funk. On Tuesday afternoon we drove through a mix of rain and snow to get to the Susquehanna for nighttime SMB electrofishing. The bass were all over the York Co shoreline and in the normally terrestrial vegetation. We caught what to my pretty good recollection was a record number of SMB for a lower river survey..over 500 in 2 hrs 20 min of actual electrofishing time. And that was with only one netter on the bow rather than the more common two netters. What is normally considered by me to be a very good catch rate when river electrofishing?....60 per hour.

Likewise, there was an abundance of large carp seen, including some real beauties, as well as numerous channel cats. We captured around 60 walleye in addition to the SMB, plus two 22 inch or so tiger Muskies. Fortunately for us, the hard rain turned to drizzle and then to clearing as the cool night wore on. About midnight it even seemed like a clear sky might appear in spots.

 

[Dave_W]

Mike wrote:
Good thing you said "usually"puts them in a funk. On Tuesday afternoon we drove through a mix of rain and snow to get to the Susquehanna for nighttime SMB electrofishing. The bass were all over the York Co shoreline and in the normally terrestrial vegetation. We caught what to my pretty good recollection was a record number of SMB for a lower river survey..over 500 in 2 hrs 20 min of actual electrofishing time. And that was with only one netter on the bow rather than the more common two netters. What is normally considered by me to be a very good catch rate when river electrofishing?....60 per hour.

Likewise, there was an abundance of large carp seen, including some real beauties, as well as numerous channel cats. We captured around 60 walleye in addition to the SMB, plus two 22 inch or so tiger Muskies. Fortunately for us, the hard rain turned to drizzle and then to clearing as the cool night wore on. About midnight it even seemed like a clear sky might appear in spots.

Wow - some great news!

5oo SMBs in a bit over 2hrs does sound incredible. The location of the fish in vegetation that would have been high and dry last month is also highly interesting. I've caught a lot of river SMBs from flooded shoreline vegetation, but this has mosly been during the pre-spawn period under high water conditions. I haven't associated this with November however - will definitely hit this type of habitat in the fall going forward. Thanks for the tips Mike (as usual).

 

[Mike]

This has been a consistent pattern that we discovered years ago. When the river gets high enough in fall such that the shoreline vegetation is flooded to various degrees, the bass, carp, and channel cats show up in droves. Electrofish there a week earlier when the river is in its normal low flow fall pattern and far fewer down to almost no bass are along the shoreline. The extreme is that back in the late 1990's or very early 2000's we caught almost none in the same stretch. We then waited for a week or so until the river rose and did quite well...nothing like this past Tuesday, but quite well. Likewise, we saw the same pattern in daylight electrofishing when daylight efforts used to be the norm.

 

[afishinado]

Mike wrote:
This has been a consistent pattern that we discovered years ago. When the river gets high enough in fall such that the shoreline vegetation is flooded to various degrees, the bass, carp, and channel cats show up in droves. Electrofish there a week earlier when the river is in its normal low flow fall pattern and far fewer down to almost no bass are along the shoreline. The extreme is that back in the late 1990's or very early 2000's we caught almost none in the same stretch. We then waited for a week or so until the river rose and did quite well...nothing like this past Tuesday, but quite well. Likewise, we saw the same pattern in daylight electrofishing when daylight efforts used to be the norm.

So your Efish effort was more or less apples to apples from past years...same river conditions, time of year and time of day. Therefore one can assume the population is doing well in the lower Susky...plus "anecdotal"angler reports verify your findings. 🙂

Good news for all.

Any size to them, Mike?

 

[Mike]

But 500 SMB does not tell us that the population is a bit over three times better than if we caught 150. One hundred fifty still would have been a good catch and good catch rate. Along with our catches at that site over the past few years it is just one more data point, impressive as it was, that reaffirms what we have been seeing there and puts an exclamation point on it! It must be remembered that the lower river's SMB abundance index is based on the average of the three sites sampled, which then takes variations in flow, timing, and temperature effects into account to produce a more reliable, comparable index. Accomac just happens to be our consistently better site of the three, and really shined this fall.

We had bass up to 19 inches. We occasionally break the 20 inch barrier there, but it is very infrequent.

The other two lower river sites that we annually sample...Lake Clark and Safe Harbor tail-race produced more or less average catches this fall, with Lake Clark having bigger than average fish for that site and the tail-race to Pequea site producing low numbers of 15 inch plus fish, just as it did for years, with the exception of the past few years. Again, this is the value of running three sites rather than a single indexing site.

As for walleye, this was the second year in a row of relatively poor reproductive success in the lower river. Not to worry, the reproductive success somewhat cycles. It is just unusual to have two of those poorer years in a row, but that's a reflection of flow and water temp changes during and post-spawning. If the river behaves in the near future as it usually does, a very large year class should be on the way in the next couple of yrs. As I said, it somewhat cycles.

 

[fritz]

Very nice. What a treat! Thanks for the information.