I took a vacation day off on Friday to head to the Susquehanna River below the dam my grandfather helped construct to try for stripers. The season is winding down as the water temperatures rise, and the regulations allow one fish between a narrow slot limit of 17-24 inches. My goal was to hook up a striper on the fly. Luckily my brother is a local to the river and knows all the deep holes where these fish hang out. This was his first trip of the year for him as well, due to the amount of upstream rain and water conditions that have kept the river high and chocolate for most of the spring.
I arrived at my brother's house at 7am and planned to launch canoes and float and fish downstream. My brother and I were in one canoe and only used fly fishing gear, while Chris's friend Dave was solo in a second canoe using spinning equipment. I had my 8 wt rod with sinking line, about a 4-foot tapered leader ending in a 10-pound test mono tippet as the water was still a tinge off color. I was mainly using unweighted Lefty Deceiver patterns in a chartreuse green large variation approximately 5 inches long with a 1/0 long shanked hook I tied. Here are some replacements I tied after the trip as I lost 3 flies to snags. Lefty used to joke on a few videos I saw of him striper fishing, "If it aint chartreuse, it aint no use" and that was true again today.
The weather started out overcast as we began fishing and I missed a hit that swirled the top not long after I started casting. Chris was doing all of the paddling leaving me to fish. We rounded the bottom side of an island and I was casting slightly upstream and across when I got a hit. Having a bit of upstream slack in the line I didn't get the Hook set I wanted but I was fighting a good-sized fish for about 10 or 12 seconds ending in the fly pulling out.
I was bummed, but excited as I was getting the action on the fly. Our spin fishing friend missed one as well by this point I believe.
Chris was using a smaller clouser and was hooking up on rocks a good bit, but shortly he had landed the first fish. It was a keeper at 17 inches so we put it in the cooler.
We were taking our time picking our way along the bottom of rapids where Chris knew there were deeper holes. I snatched up a decent sized smallmouth that hit the big fly.
We caught up with Dave, who was not having any luck besides a couple pound catfish he caught on a spinner when Chris put us in a known hotspot he knew. He was paddling us up in while I was casting across until the canoe speed pulled the fly. I was dragging my deceiver just about to lift for another cast when it was sucked down in a swirl. I set the hook and the fight was on. I landed it in short order, and the tape said just above 17 inches. We could have kept it but already had a keeper in the cooler and this would be it, so we decided to release it in the hopes of a bigger one.
I was thrilled!
We decided to go back up and float that hole again. Shortly I was hooked up again! This one gelt a little bigger and had bigger shoulders. It was a battle but I had him in to net. This one taped out to 20 inches and we put him in the cooler. We were now fishing for fun as everything from then on must be released.
As the morning moved to afternoon, the sun came out and the fishing slowed. Still Chris managed to wrestle another undersized striper before we hit the pickup point.
We came out pretty well and had a blast. This was one of the few trips where the flyrods out fished the spinning gear as we had 4 stripers to one blue catfish landed.
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