Read report of huge stripers caught in the Chesapeake Bay and football size smallmouth caught on the Susquehanna River. Kayak fishing reports from New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia.
I’ve been on the river the last three days. We caught good numbers of big fish each day, but the last day the river rose about ten inches in half as many hours. It was the best day of fishing I’ve experienced this year.
I am lucky enough to have in my backyard the Susquehanna River - one of the best smallmouth bass fisheries - with multiple locations I can get to quickly. On this trip, I wanted to get to one of my favorite sections that I haven’t been to all year: Dauphin Narrows, a few miles north of Harrisburg.
My family and I just got back from our annual camping trip to Frontier Town Campground just outside of Ocean City, MD. This is a trip we look forward to every year. For me it's the saltwater fishing, and for the kids it’s the awesome water park that is free for campers. I get to fish out of the kayak for three days, since the first and last days are set up and tear down.
On Halloween night I decided to hit the dock lights at night in hopes of finding a few stripers. I knew that with cooling temps, the fall feed, and some quality intel, that my chances would pretty good. I approached my first couple docks with no success, but I pushed on, hopping from dock to dock till I found some activity.
It’s 4:53am when I hear the back door open and shut very quickly. I’m in bed. I can hear my wife walk down the hallway, muttering about how cold it is outside. She’s a dairy farmer. She’s up each day at 1:50 am for the first milking. I ask her if she took a look at the thermometer when she left the dairy. “Ten below,” she says with disgust. She crawls in with me, puts her ice-cold feet on my warm legs, and I hop immediately out of bed. It’s time to go fishing.
The two-day unseasonably warm spell ended today! The air temperatures dropped from 45°F at 8am to the upper 30s in a few hours while we fished! Overcast and cold, drizzling rain were the order of the day. A couple times I swear the rain turned to sleet in the afternoon. Water temperatures stood steady at 38°F and the water clarity was nice at about 4’. This was the first day of a predicted freeze that ended that night with snow and freezing rain.
This spring, I decided I would finally head over to the Eastern Shore in search of my first bull red. Unfortunately, my schedule and the weather did not cooperate. I was left reading reports from local legends and wondering if I’d be able to pull off my first trip, let alone hook and land a decent red.
There is not much going on during the cold weather months of February and March. Football is over, hunting season is long gone, and the salt water scene is dull at best. To me that only means one thing - cold water bassin’!