Smallies and Fallies

[Swattie87]

dc410 and I met up and fished Swatara Creek in Dauphin County today. Had a nice time and caught a mix of Smallmouth and Fallfish. Both were hanging in areas of heavy current...we really struggled in the the slower water. We were both fishing streamers for the most part and it seemed like the fish wanted it dead-drifted today...very little action on an actively stripped fly.

As the afternoon turned to evening there was a quite an array of bugs that showed up. Mostly Whiteflies, but a few Cahills, and something very large, Hex's maybe? We tried our luck getting some Smallies to look up, but could only muster a few Fallfish and a Redbreast on top. A very nice late Summer evening on the water any way you slice it though.

A few pics of dc with one of the better Smallies...

 

[henrydavid]

Nice photos, I have much more luck dead drifting good sized buggers in the Susquehanna, stripping seems to be hit & miss, mostly miss. Sometimes you can get lucky and find them in the topwater mood for hoppers and poppers, love that action. You are lucky to still have the white flies around, we had a virtual circus with them 3 weeks ago on the Susky, no big fish rising til after dark though.

Have you ever fished for them in the evening, even on the slowest days the bite seems to pick up toward sunset, stripping poppers hard during that time can bring out some awesome topwater smashes.

 

[Fishidiot]

Nice report.

 

[brain]

they want stuff dead drifted farther up the creek as well. i've been out the last couple of days and a quartering upstream cast with a drift is what is bringing the strikes.

 

[dc410]

Thanks again Swattie for showing me some good water and access points on the Swatara Creek. We sure didn't slay 'em, but we did get into some fish. It was a very enjoyable evening. The Swatara is a good WW fishery and the smallies looked very healthy. Hope to hook up with you sometime in the near future ............ when we go after whatever is hittin'.

 

[wgmiller]

Flow is under 200 cfs right now dc410. Let me know if you want to meet up sometime to fish it. I'm going to be spending a lot of time through the end of fall up there in search of Esox lucius x Esox masquinongy...

 

[dc410]

Keep the communication lines open Geo. As time would allow I am all in on that! To even think about getting hooked up with one of those critters (or even to get a follow from one) would be awesome.

 

[wgmiller]

The two waterways of choice will be the Swatty and the 'Stoga, both of which they are known to have been stocked in. The Swatty seems to be a more "robust" fishery for them, but I'm sure given the right recon, the Conestoga could produce as well.

As far as I can tell, the last stockings on the Conestoga occurred back in 2011 from the Cocalico Creek/Conestoga mouth to the Waterworks dam. The Swatty continues to receive shots of roughly 1500 fingerling tiger muskie stockings each year however.