Susquehanna Flats Update

Still waiting for the stripers here in lovely Havre de Grace, MD, Susquehanna Flats shoreside.

I have been fishing the last two weeks on the flats, hoping the unseasonably warm weather would bring an early start to our flats season, but this has not been the case. Water temps and conditions are the best I have seen in years. Yesterday we had surface water temps consistent from 53 to 55 degrees, well warm enough to be catching fish. water clarity is also great, so I expect fast fishing when the fish do show up.

We have been catching some fish. Brad Gladfelter and I fished several times this week. One evening we caught 6 small rockfish, and Tuesday morning we caught 4. All of the fish were 16 to 20 inches and believe most of them to be resident fish. Alot of bait fish have shown up in recent days. White Perch have arrived in good numbers, as have some river herring and shad. I watched a few wading anglers catch several hickory shad in the Susquehanna yesterday evening at the mouth of Deer Creek. So things are just days away, and I will keep you posted as we get catching fish. Heading out now to try again.

March 1 Fly Fishing on Gunpowder River

Avid fisherman Scott Burns and I took advantage of the good weather the first day of March and fished the Upper Gunpowder River. With temps forecast in the 60's we had hopes of a late morning hatch of blackflies and maybe a few stones.

We fished the catch and release area of the stream above Falls rd. nearest Prettyboy Reservoir. Rains the night before had caused spillover at the dam and raised stream flows to 250cfs+.

Early fishing was tough but we managed to hook a few trout while fishing blackfly larvae patterns in size 20 and 22 below an indicator. Light gray patterns with a dark rib seemed to work good, though we dropped a few fish on the small hooks. We saw a few stray little black stones zipping across the surface, but no takers. After a while we switched to streamers and had some takes, landing the brown pictured below on an olive and black zonker.

Around noon we noticed the first of the blackflies begin to hatch and almost immediately fish began to rise. Though we saw many risers for the next hour or so, the fish were inconsistent and tough to fool. The high flows did not help our cause with the dry fly. We ended with our morning adventure with a good brown hooked on 7x and a size 22 cdc blackfly pattern, never got him to hand but fooled him none the less.

The warm days forecast this week should bring even better fishing to this stretch of river. A good way to cure the cabin fever.