Last evening, Dave Warholic gave me a call and asked if I wanted to go fishing below Harrisburg, Pa in the morning. What a great opportunity for me to reconnect with Dave and get to see and ride in his new Snyder Boat.
It was my first time out since last week and I had heard that the river had been pretty muddy/dirty since the last rains. We also had some powerful thunderstorms move through last night. I had no idea what we were going to be greeted with expect when we got on the water today. I was pleasantly surprised that the water, although not clear, wasn't too bad at all. Most areas where we fished had that dark green algae stain with a visibility of about 2.5'.
We met at 7:00 a.m. and arrived at our first spot around 7:30 a.m. Not much action at all. I did have one chew through my stick bait...
The left end is where the eye was and the hook was just above the "sawed off" half. Whatever hit that bait sure did want it!
A few cast later, I had a beautiful 18" smallie take the stick bait... Dave took a great picture of it and, when downloading it, I was used my pic editor. I went to rotate the pic and lost the entire thing. Dang!! Sorry, Dave. That bass had some nice dark markings, too.
It took quite awhile until we were able to hit a 14" smallie on a Cotton Cordell Super Spot.
Both Dave and I had fish follow our lures to the boat, but failed to even make an attempt to strike. :( We even located a smallie just cruising the shallow water. We attempted to entice the fish, but she wanted no parts of it.
We caught our next bass on a tube at the back end of an island... Three fish, Three Different Lures! We had absolutely no pattern going and very few fish in the boat by 1:00 p.m.
Out last fish came at the end of our trip. Dave had pointed out a great spot in front of boulder where he catches topwater fish in the summer. I tossed a Husky Jerk JB near that boulder and then pointed to the general location and asked Dave if that's where he meant. When I returned to retrieving the jerkbait, this fantastic 18.5 smallie went skyrocketing into the air. This fish fought like it was on steroids.
Once we got her into the boat, we noticed a big ole' scrape along her side. Not sure how she got it, but it sure looked sore!
Ouch!
We had mostly overcast skies all day long. It looked threatening a few times, but we got absolutely no rain.
The water temp ranged from 72 degrees to 75 degrees depending on our location. The air temp started at 63 degrees around 7:00 a.m. and was 73 degrees when I got back in my truck to drive home at 4:30 p.m.
Between the two of us, we threw a heck of a lot baits... tubes, spinnerbaits, crankbaits, lipless crankbaits, swimming jigs, hard jerkbaits, soft flukes, and stick baits. It floored us that even the tube was not finding takers.
We saw about 20 dead bass and 2 dead carp on our short jaunts around the river. It didn't seem overly bad for the post-spawn stress period. I've been hearing reports from other sections of the river where anglers are quite concerned.
I want to say that Dave's 17' Snyder Boat is laid out very well and has a lot of space to maneuver in. He has a Merc 2-Stroke 90/65 hp pushing the 'er and it moves exceptionally well.
He had a 24v Minn Kota 80 lb. thrust bow trolling motor. This 80 lb thrust TM certainly did a fine job keeping the rig in pretty heavy current. I was really impressed.
Great boat and thanks for the day on the water, Dave.
Take care,
Dad
The
