Working on the river

By Ken Maurer
For The Daily Item

May 24, 2009 08:02 am

— I recently attended a meeting about the Susquehanna River and its smallmouth. The meeting included three of the 10 commissioners of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. The meeting came about as a result of conversations on the river smallies Web site. That Website is a very good one for anglers interested in river fishing for smallmouth.
In a nutshell, the North Branch seems to be in the best shape as far as smallmouth and overall water quality is concerned. That’s sort of hard to believe as ugly as it gets when we get a lot of rain. The West Branch is in second place, and the main river’s water quality and smallmouth population gets worse the farther downriver you go. The state Department of Environmental Protection is responsible for water quality, however, the PF&BC is going to take a closer look at water quality to find out why smallmouth numbers are down in certain areas. Several poor spawn years and the columnaris disease that affected some of the smallmouth fry seemed to take the bulk of the blame. The possibility of having a no-kill season from Nov. 1 to the regular opener in June was also discussed. There are no easy answers to the situation and the PF&BC has hired a full-time biologist dedicated to the smallmouth situation. At present in our area of the river, we have an excellent population of larger smallmouth. The question is what will we have when the larger year classes start to die off. The lower river is already in dire straights according to some. There will be another public meeting in Harrisburg on July 13 and 14, and again on Oct. 15 and 16 to discuss findings of the ongoing studies being done on the river. One of the points that the commissioners had is that bass fishermen, though they are great in number and have a tremendous impact on the economy, have no central organization. There was discussion on forming such a group and I will keep you informed on the progress.

GREEN DRAKES RETURN: We are approaching the end of the month, which signals the start of migration of anglers to Penns Creek for the perennial green drake hatch. Penns has a tremendous amount of insect life and when the drakes are hatching, so are several others, including sulphurs. It is sometimes hard to figure out what they are eating, especially for a part-time fly fisherman such as myself. It can be absolutely maddening to be on the creek and have trout rising all around you, and you have to figure out what stage of what insect they are taking. Every once in a while you can figure it out, get the mechanics in order, and have a ball.
Last year, I finally broke away one afternoon to try my hand at the drakes. When I got to the creek, the heavens opened up with a rainstorm the likes of which would have left Captain Ahab trembling in his boots. I went fishing anyway. Got soaked, got to watch the creek turn chocolate right before my eyes, and caught one trout on a drake nymph. It does get better than that.