Tubin' down the Susquehanna

Karen with her biggest smallmouth and me with mine.

Love seeing the different color patterns on these fish.

Karen and I were supposed to fish the Susquehanna River on April 7 with Jason Shay of Ken Penrod's Life Outdoors Unlimited.  At that time, the river was running high, and to top it off, rain pelted the area the day before.  Jason called and reported the river was close to flood level -- he said we might catch some fish, but he recommended to push the date back.

This is my smallmouth bass.
There are many like it but
this one is mine.

We rescheduled to Monday, and what a difference the wait made!  The river then was close to 10 feet that Friday, but it had dropped to about 5-1/2 feet by the time we showed up Monday morning.  By the end of the day, we managed put 117 smallmouth bass into the boat.  I tried keeping track of the fish I caught but lost count after 12 or so.  Which is good.  I'm guessing my personal tally was 40-plus, and Karen had that many fish, too.

Karen with maybe the first fish
of the day. I don't remember.

The frenzy started at our first spot on the river when Jason parked the boat behind a natural dam of rocks, and we tossed campground tubes into a pool of water off a strong current.  The tubes were the hot ticket for most of the day.  I tried a Z-Man TRD Finesse worm for a bit but kept going back to the tubes.

Anyway, Karen got the first fish and it was crazy for the next few hours.  A lot of cookie-cutter fish but also a lot of nice bass 14 inches and bigger.  Most of my blog posts are how I caught a few fish and remembered how each one was hooked, but this time, things blurred together.  I got a couple, Karen got a couple, like shooting fish in a barrel.

This dam of rocks had a pool of water on one side against an island, and there was a similar pool on the opposite side against the bank. When there was a lull, Jason would say, "OK if we go 10 minutes without a fish, we will move to the other pool."  The shot clock clicked down but one of us would catch another fish to reset the clock.  Finally we moved to the other side of the river, and it was another feeding frenzy!  I caught three fish on my first three casts -- just crazy.  The only downside was this pool was more prone to snagging the bottom-bouncing tubes.

A double early on.

At some point, Karen and I realized Jason had a fish counter.

"That makes 53."

"What?  You're keeping track?  We caught that many fish?!"

He kept tallying the fish, and at 11 a.m. we had more than 70!

Finally, things died down (I don't think the shot clock ever expired), and the crew voted to move to another spot.  Jason took us to a weed bed practically in the middle of the river.  The weeds protruded a few feet above the surface and created two fast sections of water on either side with slack water in between.  He said a lot of people try fishing this area and move on after only catching a couple fish.  Thankfully, those people weren't around to watch us, because that weed bed had some lunkers!  He instructed us to throw the tubes into the channel on one side and let the lures bounce along the bottom with the current doing the work.  Initially it was slow, but we kept at it and discovered that the tubes need to be fished REALLY SLOW.

Did I say crazy?  Caught this smallmouth, and it had
a tube (not ours) down it's throat plus a live crayfish.

Dragging the tubes across the bottom, Jason figured the bass weren't really feeding, just angry something was invading their spawning beds.  You could feel the fish tap-tap on the other end, set the hook, and it was fish on!

It wasn't quite the frenzy we encountered at the previous spot, but the smallmouth bass were an overall better size.  The cookie-cutters under 14 inches weren't roaming this hotspot -- fifteen incher here, 17 incher there, a few around 16.

Then I hooked into a fish that felt like an absolute beast on my medium-light St. Croix Avid-X rod with six-pound P-Line fluorocarbon.  I kept trying to pull the fish to the awaiting net Jason had in the water, and the fish would dive down below the boat trying to escape.  With my rod tip in the water keeping the smallmouth from jumping, the fish finally reached the net -- she was a fat female (microaggression!) measuring around 18.5 inches.

Like I said earlier, the timeline was blurring.  Karen was getting nice smallmouth bass in the back of the boat, and then a big fish clamped on the other end of her line.  After a fierce struggle, she managed to get this one into the boat, and it measured 18.75 inches!  The guide service has a "20-inch club" but women get entered for catching a fish 18 inches or larger.  It's kind of like ladies classes in autocrossing.  Karen got a sweet medallion and a gift certificate from Under Armour for 40 percent off apparel from their web site.

Meh. It's only 16 inches.

At this point we began laughing at bass under 16 inches.  "Should I take a picture?"  "Nah, let it go." If most of these runt Susquehanna smallmouth were caught on the Upper Potomac, I would have taken a picture of every one of them and posting to Facebook.  But on the Susquehanna, they were just average. Not to discredit them brown fish, they were still a blast to catch.  Because of the fight they put on, you really didn't know what size fish was on the other end.  Fish that felt like monsters weren't that big but were smart and worked against the current trying to escape.  Some of the smaller females were still chunky because they were full of eggs and ready to spawn.

Our steed for the day.  Jet-prop boat with large talons.

When the fish counter clicked above 90, we kept asking Jason for updates.  Fish number 91 here, 92 there ... finally reaching 99.  Who would get number 100?  Karen.  She got the first fish of the day, the biggest and the 100th.

When the bite on the grass bed died down, we moved down and floated off shore from an island for a little while.  Lots of snags here and only a few smallmouth.  It was around 2 p.m., and Jason asked if we wanted to try a couple more spots.  One of them was on the Juniata (not Juanita) River where we would try spinnerbaits.

I hate spinnerbaits.

Watching all those fishing shows since the mid 1980s where they were slaying bass after bass on spinnerbaits, I had never caught a single fish on a real spinnerbait.  But this is one of the reasons I go out with guides -- to try different lures and techniques.

Fish counter read 117.

We jetted up to the Juniata past the Susquehanna confluence and began firing spinnerbaits at the bank while floating downriver. There is absolutely nothing to fishing with a spinnerbait -- cast, retrieve slowly.  The blade(s) give resistance through the water so they can be fished at almost any depth.

Surprisingly to me anyway, everybody caught a handful of smallmouth -- nothing big, just about every one was 12 inches or smaller.  But it was still fun to get confidence in spinnerbaits.  Jason figured in a week or so, they would be the go-to lure.  When I go to Bass Pro Shops the next time, I will probably buy 10 of them.  Oh wait, I already have 10.

Pizza Boy victory beer.  Pizza Boy is my new favorite
name for a brewery.

It was a fantastic day and well worth the expense of a guide.  Unfortunately, the Susquehanna and its tributaries are off limits for smallmouth bass fishing from May 1 to mid-June, so another trip will have to wait.  Going to have to make due with cookie-cutters on the Potomac and Little Patuxent rivers for awhile.

After parting ways with Jason, we stopped at Pizza Boy Brewing for a couple slices and sampling of beer, plus a six-pack and crowler to take home.

Wild animals seen: smallmouth bass, bald eagle, mink, turtle, duck, duck, goose.