Dan and I took the opportunity to take his 11 year old son, Bryce, out on the river for his first overnight run. Bryce after helping man Anthracite Outfitter's "kayak fishing" booth at two river festivals this summer, expressed interest in running on his first overnight kayak fishing trip on our waters on the North Branch of the Susquehanna River. Neither Dan nor I wanted this request to get stale, so we worked out a Wednesday afternoon to Thursday afternoon trip. Bryce was gung-ho and we got after it.
Bryce learned to cast in the surf using a 2oz. hopkins spoon hanging from a Penn 4500ss on a G-Loomis 7'er seemingly at the same time he was learning to speak. Casting from the kayak was an easy transition for him.
The river this season is running low and warm. Consequently the smallmouth bass are congregated around moving, oxygenated water. With the low flow the insects that emerge to winged adults this time of year are being condensed en-mass, and are easy eats in dark time. Basically, we're finding the smallmouth need to be triggered with an explosive and equally abrupt stop and go retrieve with swim baits, crank baits, spinner baits, and even flies being presented with a big down current belly and 3' strips.
The smallies show no signs of feeding, as jigs and soft plastics presented slowly aren't getting touched. Shortly into the drift and coming through our cherished boulder field I was working a paddle tailed swim bait rigged on a weedless, weighted worm hook. I fished a handful of casts just keeping light contact with the boulder tops with a slow drive in the reel. After a few well placed casts didn't show any fish I let the swim bait get down and began working it back to the kayak with abrupt, yet smooth snaps of the rod tip every time I felt the bait contact the boulders on the bottom never taking drive out of the reel and only speeding up to take up slack. On the second cast employing this technique, when the bait was about 5' away from my yak I noticed a bulging V-wake and instantaneously my rod tip went down and my reel sang as the drag yield to the weight of the take. I instantly thought musky, however, after a number of surging runs, some under the yak, I brought a juiced up 5# channel cat to net. By far the best fight I've had on the river this season...
By the time I got the photo snapped and the fish back in the drink we had drifted up on our next slight, elevation change with decent moving water. It was hot, and wading with the fly rod was such an inviting thought that I indulged in it. I pulled up the yak and waded out to about mid-thigh depth. Again, by swinging clousers on a deep down current belly with a 3' long stripping retrieve I got the smallie's interest. If the fly was just allowed to come around on the swing there were no takers. As soon as I accelerated the fly along its path with the stripping retrieve they responded.
Dan and Bryce headed down river a bit and pulled up too. I eventually caught up and took Bryce out in the current to work with him on some technique. The boy was on point...
It was a good opportunity to work retrieve and current technique but unfortunately we were to far below the quick water where the congregation of smallies were. We got back on the paddle and made for camp.
We put a bit of a hustle on to get camp set so we could eat...
I should mention that we were pre-frontal and were on the edge of weather. After dinner the white mayflies (ephoron leukon) started to come up in good numbers. This could be a good thing if one is moderately well versed with a fly rod, and can be in slack water when the cats come up to vacuum the spent flies after they mate. These are dry fly caught channel cats from the week prior, I was hitting from 11pm to 2am...
It's a bad thing when there's lightning and being on the water is potentially deadly. It's bad because there is such a volume of insects that the fish get tunnel visioned and only key on the bugs. If one isn't dropping a good fly replica on the film leading the v-waking fish vacuuming the surface, they're going to have a hard time catching. I know, sight fishing with dry flies for channel cats from the kayak in the dark is as surreal as it sounds. Here's what the water surface looks like in the after math of a white mayfly hatch...
Every white mark is a spent mayfly. Here's some background on the E. Leukons. They look like a burrowing mayfly type nymph. They emerge in the thousands. Keep in mind that when a may fly hatches from a water born nymph to a winged fly, the first stage of its winged life is called a sub-imago or more commonly amongst fly anglers a dun. Most mayflies will spend about a day in the form of the dun eventually molting again into the imago or what fly casters call spinners. The spinner stage is the sexually mature adult fly. The Latin name for the mayfly order is Ephemeroptera, which translated to English means winged for a day, roughly. Matter of fact the mouth parts on a winged mayfly are vestigial rendering that organ as functional as the appendix in humans. Once mating has occurred, the females, lay the eggs and female and male alike die. When they die fly anglers call it a spinner fall and often get rightfully amped up because fish come up and gorge on the easy meal as referenced in the last image. A unique aspect of the E. Leukon is that they go from dun to spinner almost immediately after hatching, often molting on the wing. So when one sees the white mayflies coming off the water they should know that in less than 2 hours time the water will be blanketed with the spinners. Here's a sequence of what the dun to spinner transition looks like...
Given that a system was moving through and electricity was evident it would have been downright stupid to put ourselves on the water to get after the fish on top. Suffice it to say that all night long the sound of exploding water was echoing on the wind as fish were gorging on the spinner fall.
Throughout the course of the evening we got hit with three heavy thunderstorms. The first that came through caused me to have to lay diagonally in my tent as the walls were being collapsed by the 30mph + down draft coming over the mountain ridge to our Northeast. Once that blew through I reset my tent, andre-stoked the fire. Within a half hour of the first storm the second blew in but not as nasty as the first that came through. I bedded down for the night and was briefly awoken by the last of the showers that came through around first light.
I was extremely impressed by Bryce's resolve weathering the tumult of the night's weather. Given it was his first time ever afield over night in a tent he held it together and handled nature's strong arm like a man. Actually, he really must have been tired because he slept through the first storm.
When we got up in the morning Dan got the pancakes, breakfast sausage, and coffe on the flame and Bryce and I teamed up to catch. The backside of the island is more like a large trout stream at the current flow rate. I can easily cast to the far shore, but Bryce at his age doesn't have the torquing power in his hands to cast across the flow to the far shoreline. The fish were sitting on the edge of back current and were hitting a shallow crankbait on the stop after an explosive retrieve out of the slack water. I would get the fish hooked up and Bryce handled getting it in...
After we worked the oneside of the island, Bryce and I went to my pet eddy pocket on the other side. The water on the current flow isn't circulating enough to have a core of still water conducive to a spook. However, there are weed pockets there and they told me to throw a buzz bait. I got it cross current and made it make a bee line for the weeds. Sure enough, Bryce beached his best smallie of the trip...
After breakfast, Bryce had his fill of the river for this trip. Weathering the storm like the trooper he was and not getting the rest he could have he asked if we could not take all day fishing our way out. We obliged his request and fully understood. We had a downriver blow so we did some fishing on the way out and eventually got to the take out. Today he and dad are running around a water park with the under water camera and I eagerly await word of the stories Bryce told his cousins about the trip.
I would like to offer a huge thank-you to John Oast for allowing us to use his Ocean Kayak Malibu 2xl tandem. That kayak was everything we needed to bring the pup out and show him what kayak fishing life is like Anthracite Outfitters style...
Thanks again Mr. Toast!!!
Dan and I have a full plate of river trips for August and I hope to cash in on the Leukons while they last.
Stay tuned, tight lines, and as always... Safe Paddling!!!
Fish Tank
