Susquehanna Flats with Mike Burton

I was all loaded up for the river and eating breakfast at our local greasy spoon, when Mike gave me a call on the cell. "Do you want to fish the Flats?" Let me think a moment about that... "Okay! Let's go."

I took the boat back home, placed it back into the garage, and picked up a few LM lures. Mike arrived at my home and we loaded stuff from my rig over to his and headed south.

We launched outside of Havre de Grace, Md. and headed across the river. It was overcast with the sun peaking through. The air temp was a humid 68 degrees. The water temp was in the low 60's and much cooler, according to another angler we met, than last week. The tide was high and sitting still when we hit our first spot. The Conowingo Dam wasn't dumping much water into the lower Susquehanna River and there were plenty of rocks showing below the dam.

Throughout our day, we threw crankbaits, spinnerbaits in a multitude of colors, 7" Blue Fleck Worms (5/0 Worm Hook), Flipping Tubes (5/0 Hooks), regular tubes, and 1/2 oz. Rat'l Traps in several colors. It wasn't a banner day, but we did catch 2 LM and one was lost at the boat. Two came off the Flipping Tube and the third hit a crankbait.

We weren't on the water for more than two and a half hours before the thunderstorms moved in on us. The storm wrapped around on us several times! Okay, enough is enough, we decided to call it a day before bad things started to happen to us.

It was my first 2009 trip to the Flats. We always have a great time running around fishing for "the other" species. The water was rather stained and there was some really muddy water, mostly on the west shoreline, from some of the smaller creeks dumping.

The current started to pick up as the tide began to move. As we drove over the dam on our way home, the water was dumping a ton of water.

The area below the dam is always teeming with bird life. We caught a glimpse of two bald eagles. One was soaring below the dam as we drove south and over the dam. On the way home, we saw one mature sitting on a large boulder, taking it easy, and in total control of things surrounding him.

dadTB