Where are the Red Eye Rockbass?

[Woolybugger]

Have any of you caught any rockbass recently? They were so abundant in the Susquehanna. Especially at dusk, they were so thick that you couldn't get the smallmouth to even see the fly, a rockbass would eat it first!
What in the world happened?

 

[Salvi1]

Very interesting question indeed! people i know who fish the susque have not had any luck lately with smallmouth but mostly from fishing at the wrong time i suppose. during these dog days it is not uncommon to catch rockbass in the yellow breeches...when that is the case you know its way too warm for trout these couple months are the only time i am not out looking for trout and let em rest if they have survived the low water and heat...also Wooley what part of the river do you fish?

S,

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear wooleybugger,

They jumped the train early and left town before all the smallmouth died off.

I'm sort of joking but I do know what you are talking about. I remember years ago fishing the Fabri-Dam in Sunbury as a kid and having no bait. I'd just find a dried up crispy-fried dead minnow and cut the tail off it and put it on a small baitholder hook and, Voila', instant rock bass.

I haven't caught a rock bass out of the river since about 1996, but there is nothing wrong with the river according to the experts.

Regards,
Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[Chaz]

The experts are wrong, fish don't disappear for no reason. American Rivers named the Susquehanna River as the most endangered river in 2005. This wasn't the first time it was on the list either. My guess is that there is more polution coming into the river from New York then anywhere in PA. You go to the NY border and it i a mess.

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear Chaz,

With all due respect aforded to you stick to commenting on something you think you know something about. You don't know anything about smallmouth bass.

Don't argue, you don't.

The North Branch above Sunbury and the West Branch above Sunbury still fish well when conditions are conducive to fishing.

The main river from Sunbury on down is getting crappier by the minute.

Regards,
Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[afishinado]

Fishing for smallmouths on the Susky is still decent (not great) on the north branch up to NY State. The main branch down to MD is the problem.

Unbelieveably panfish have seem to nearly disappear everywhere in the river, in favor of catfish?!?



Tim Murphy wrote to Chaz: “With all due respect afforded to you stick to commenting on something you think you know something about.”

Tim, what are you trying to do, shut down the site! If we all stuck to that rule we’d have no posts at all!!!

 

[troutbert]

Which experts are saying the Susque is fine? I haven't read that. What are the PFBC, DEP, etc. saying these days? Has anyone been doing studies recently?

I thought everyone was working under the same assumption, that the massive fish kill in 2005 was indication of a problem.

I'm glad to hear that people are having decent fishing in the upper river. On August 6, 7, 2005 a friend and floated and fished several places between the NY line and Wilkes-Barre and there were hordes of dead and dying juvenile bass floating down the river. Maybe it didn't get hit as bad as further downstream, but it got hit.

It's a puzzlement as to what's going on. It was low and warm in 2005, but we've had that many times before. 1999 was brutal, and 1991 was bad etc. In the 1960s there were some horrendous drought years.

Sewage and industrial treatment is now much better than it was in the 1960s. On the Shenandoah River they blamed the problems on factory farms. But is there much of that on the upper Susque basin?

I have an original theory about this. I think the reduction in mine acid drainage, while a desirable thing generally, is shifting the river towards a more fertile and eutrophic state. Previously the mine drainage sort of balanced out all the excess nutrients (sewage, fertilizer, farm animal poop, fish hatchery effluent, food processing waste etc.).

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear Troutbert,

While I am not dismissing your theory in any way I have to say that there are currently some huge hog farms in the Juniata basin and up around Herndon on the main stem that didn't exist 20 years ago.

I like my pork more than most people but 20,000 pigs pooping in a field and then having rain water wash it down to the river isn't a good thing in my estimation.

My recent experiences over the last couple of years on the Susquehanna have me scratching my head. I don't know if this comment will be understood, but to me the river "smells dead." Even with low clear water a fertile river smells fertile, the Susky has no smell whatsoever, even the mud doesn't stink anymore.

When the Juniata runs strong in the summer after a good thunderstorm in the basin it smells funny and the water is foamy on the West shore of the Susquehanna in Harrisburg. Brown foam and crud comes down that side of the river and the East was historically the crappy and cruddy side.

I don't know the source of all the problems but to me it can't be just droughts and floods. We haven't had a good spawn on the Susquehanna in years. Some years good numbers of fish swim up but they die off before they get a chance to grow up.

Fish have survived high and low water for millions of years, I have to wonder why they suddenly forget how to do it in the last 8 or 10?

Regards,
Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[troutbert]

I agree. It's pretty clear that these rivers have water quality problems. Interestingly, back when the fishery in the Harrisburg was around its peak, and everyone was raving about it, I stopped at Clouser's fly shop to buy some flies.

Since everyone was so enthusiastic about the fishery, and friends and I were catching jillions of smallmouth, I was surprised at some of the gloomy things Bob was saying about the river. He was talking about a lot of different things he was seeing that indicated that the water quality was going downhill. Little details that only an observant person who spent a lot of time on the water would notice. I was frankly a little skeptical, I thought the river was doing great. But it looks like he was right.

 

[littlejuniata]

I know there are too many corporate farms on the Juniata, even Spruce Creek. That huge dairly operation drains their barns right into a field, in addition to trucking that crap to other areas. http://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/ You could also include the private trout fisheries, since they pollute to.


Now the Huntingdon area residents must foot the bill for an update to their fairly modern sewage facility, why not just shut the corporate farms down??

 

[littlejuniata]

http://www.epa.gov/OWOW/info/WaterEventsNews/wssp98.pdf

 

[Chaz]

Well well well, so now you've changed you tune. I didn't comment on bass fishing Tim, I commented on the river, it is in sad shape throughout the basin why else would the water be green before entering PA? Trusy me it's full of all kinds of tish. Not to mention all the AMD coming into both branches.
Disclaimer, I don't fish the Susquehanna so I can't comment on the fishing.
http://www.fish.state.pa.us/images/fisheries/afm/2005/4x07_15nbsusq.htm
http://www.fish.state.pa.us/images/fisheries/afm/2005/4x10_28nbsusq.htm
http://www.fish.state.pa.us/images/fisheries/afm/2006/4x10_23yoywe.htmhttp://www.fish.state.pa.us/images/fisheries/afm/2004/4_11-08yoy.htm

 

[Woolybugger]

also Wooley what part of the river do you fish?

S,

I fish almost all the Susquehanna. Wrightsville was wonderful a few years ago, but now only channel cats. From "long level" up past the Rt 30 bridge, was the best concentration on rockbass! With a flyrod you could easily catch 100 a day! Trolling after dark under the Rt462 bridge when the lights came on, the rockbass wouldn't give the walleyes a chance to hit the lures! Every cast!
Now I only fish upstream of Harrisburg. Marysville, Perdix and up the Duncannon, I probably know every rock in the water! LOL
The best fishing I ever had was about 10 years ago. Fly fishing around Perdix, wet wading with a 6wt, on a summer afternoon. I'd start around noon, it didn't matter back then, the bass would hit a fly even when the sun was out. I would put on a bathing suit and felt bottom shoes and Polaroid sun glasses. I could see all the life in the clear river, bass would be swimming ten feet in front of me. Even with crappy flies anyone could easily catch a hundred smallmouth.

Chaz,
Thanks for the great info. You guys upstream didn't get hit as hard as we did.
Everybody on this site wants the bass to return and be as good as it was, even Tim!! But we have to be honest and give our opinions about how the fishing really is.
A lot of seasoned fishin' guys that fished the Susquehanna for a long time, tell me it isn't worth the effort anymore! So many have told me how sad it makes them to see the river dying.

And about the "foam" and the "brown floating stuff" in the water. I've noticed this also. The last couple years I've seen what looked like floating sewage in the Susquehanna. I'm a die hard fly fisherman, so I keep telling myself that it is just a algae bloom........ but I really know better, it's just that I refuse to believe what is happening to the river.

 

[Fishidiot]

I too have noticed a decline in rockies - esp large ones over about 8 inches. I fish a lot of small bass creeks in SC PA. What I find worrying is that these creeks still have good populations of smallies, largies, and red-breast sunnies - but the rock bass are definitely becoming increasingly rare. When I do find them they are usually locally concentrated in a single pool or two and they are often small. Like Tim, it's been about a decade since I got a rockie in the Sus.

 

[sandfly]

plenty of bass and rock's here on pine, some large rock bass at that...one pool alone produced over 20 fish...there are a lot of smallies here as well, maybe they are staying away from the susky in the summer and going up the tribs...I know they dissapear in the late fall...going back down to the susky?

 

[littlejuniata]

I am pretty certain that most of you look at the USGS stream level sites, and have noticed how much lower the streams, rivers are compared to historical data, that along with global wamring certainly isn't helping this situation.

 

[tomatocan]

I will always wonder how development affects the water quality. From the overladen silt fence of new construction to the run off of a big box parking lot these factors have to affect the water quality. There has been a lot of houses planted in previously rural areas in the last 10 years. Maybe agriculture is to blame or will be blamed, however I bet the answer is multifactorial. At any event, I never thought of rock bass as an indicator species of water quality, however they have rescued many fishing trips for me and would be sorely missed.

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear tomatocan,

I'm sure development plays a role in the declining water quality. One thing that I seem to notice is that rain gets into and through the river much faster courtesy of the recent building boom.

About 15 years ago my brother and I fished with Bob Clouser one August afternoon. A heavy and violent thunderstorm forced us off the river and into the nearby refuge of a friend of Bob's who had a home right along the river in Royalton.

It rained hard for about 45 minutes and there was a lot of water to bail out of the boat. We resumed fishing and fished until after dark and the river did not get the slightest bit discolored.

Nowadays. every single little itty bitty creek pumps mud and crud into the river after a thunderstorm. It gets discolored within minutes of a good hard rain. The dirty water doesn't last long, but that crud is building up somewhere on the river.

Regards,
Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[JeffK]

I find this thread interesting. As a kid in the 1960's rock bass were a kid's best friend since I could always catch plenty in my local rivers, the Musconetcong and South Branch Raritan in NJ, even when I didn't have the skills to catch too many trout. About 10 years ago they vanished and it bothered me a great deal, even though the great majority of trout fishermen don't seem to have noticed. However, as one of the fish that kept me interested in the sport as a kid I miss them a lot.

As Tomatocan noted, who could have imagined that old red eye could go from the never fail fish to an indicator species.

 

[ginkyhackle]

I have been having a blast with these little guys all summer. -- They are absolutely superabundant in the Brandywine near the Chadds Ford Bridge on route 202. A few days ago, I pulled up 14 in 30 minutes using a big red nymph (they seem to really like red). The Brandywine rock bass are the largest rock bass I have had the pleasure of catching.