Running the Juanita

looking upstream, the marine layer lifts over the Juniata

Last Spring when Henry and I were frustrated with Clear Shade Creek we found the Little Juanita and it turned out to be a gem.   One thing led to another and we decided we'd try a smallmouth trip to the main stem 'Juniata' and we're sure glad that we did.     From the perspective of a blue liner, the Juniata is a big river, a really big river. It's the 2nd largest tributary of the Susquehanna which is the largest river east of the Mississippi.   The Juniata flows from and drains a huge portion of central Pennsylvania from just South of State College flowing easterly to Dauphin township 15 miles northwest of Harrisburg.

Juniata Rivershed

The Juniata begins its 104-mile course at the confluence of the Little Juniata and Frankstown Branch (of the Juniata) just west of Petersburg, PA. Its generally broad and shallow as it meandering through the PA ridgelines with a rocky bottom that supports great smallmouth habitat. With so much water and no local knowledge Henry and I relied on fishing reports, blog diving, known access points and a google maps study of river structure to decide upon a 2.5 mile trip in the vicinity of Mifflintown, PA for our first adventure on the Juniata.






It took the first several hours for us to answer the rivers questions, its shallow expanses masking the deeper channels.   We picked up a few along the way but it wasn't till right after lunch when we were at the top of the island that things heated up.   We found the 'black hole', named not because for its depth but for inexhaustible run of feisty smallies.   I'd caught 20 smallies out of it before I persuaded Henry to join me (he was having success on his own), then with 10 minutes to recharge the hole gave up another 20 smallies to him. When we reached the bottom of the hole and the bite tapered off we rested with a beer and a sandwich and my kayak, liberated from my tether, demonstrated its ability to float the river my itself, it wasn't till Hen looked up and saw my yak 100m down stream that we learned it was gone.     Henry hopped back in his Kuda and another 10 minutes later we were back in business....and as we'd let the black hole cool down again we fished it one more time and again pulled out smallie after smallie.   Back at the top of the island you can see to the left we went down the narrower (rt side) channel and found faster, deeper water throughout the mile long island and consistently picked up bronzebacks when and where every the water was 2 or more feet deep.   At some point I began to tire, got lazy and dunked under when a rock caught my boot and started to feel the cold 2/3s of the way down the island.   Hen would have stayed for another 2 hours but even he was getting tired so we fished quickly from the bottom of the island down and in doing so missed so amazing looking water between the two bridges before the takeout.   The Smallies today responded near equally to both smoke-sparkle tubes and a variety of weighted streamers.  A great day and a great length to fish.

Thanks for reading -- Matt

Last Lick on the North Fork

Lovely weather greeted James and I at the North Fork today, the fish were not active the weather having turned and the water cooling rapidly, but we still had a great relaxing 4.5 hours on one of our favorite rivers.   Enjoy this photo tour...

Thanks for photo fishing with us

Get some mud on your tires :-)

Salt Water Recon

When you fish blue lines it's usually definable, the upper Rapidan, Devils Ditch, etc.  so I was abit overwhelmed when Fritz, Jacob and I arrived to fish, "the lower Chesapeake" there's so much water in that descriptor that it would take a lifetime to fish it all so what we bit off was a survey of several definable fisheries.   Fritz with some time on his hands!!! dove into fishing blogs and found Lynnhaven Inlet located just south and east of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel (CBBT) in Virginia Beach.

Lynnhaven Inlet Broadly brodered by 225, 264 & 279

After a long slog from NOVA we slid our two canoes into Lynhaven at 0930 under piercing blue skies and an outgoing tide.  Lynnhaven provides temporary shelter for many ocean species but is know as a nursery for puppy drum and to a lesser degree, speckled trout, stripers and flounder.  We came armed with medium-spinning gear and all manner of soft plastics rigged with jig heads + 8wt fly rods hoping to find fish with our spinning rigs and catch a few on long rods. This is lovely water but again there's so much of it it was hard for us to target and after 5 unfruitful hours we only had a 12" blue fish to our name, caught on a spinner bait.   We learned to bring a cast net and to be prepared to fish cut bait on circle hooks just off the grass beds if we wanted puppy drum and that besides a resident population of small trout the trout season here warms up in October.

Stymied and sun/water burned we headed back across the 64 bridge/tunnel to beat the tide of traffic and try our luck just over the Rt 17 bridge northeast of Gloucester, VA at Browns Bay.   The always amazing site of big deck carriers in port at Norfolk was over our left hand shoulder as we crossed the bridge.

Browns bay feels about as far away as you can get from NOVA and civilization, this is the land that time forgot and I suspect that 45 did pretty well in this rural area.    The water was just beautiful as we paddled out from the boat launch you can see at 8:30 in the map below, but despite a few exciting top water attacks we couldn't put a fish in the boat.

After retiring back to Williamsburg we 'watered' down at Buffalo Wild Wings and settled into our quickly scheduled fantasy draft...who knows, maybe less research will lead me to victory....it frequently seems to work for brother Tim! Friday morning found us again crossing the Rt 17 Bridge  Yorktown to Gloucester and heading even further into remote Virginia.   A new fishing friend had sent us a link to a kayaking adventure where the boaters commented that their were fishing jumping out of the water -- not today as the winds raised serious whitecaps on the water and we were relegated to small canal/inlets to avoid the wind.   We did find some predator fish slashing prey fish but we couldn't get themk to bite (boy did we try).

All in all this was a great recon where we learned some lessons and reinforced how much there is that we don't know and how much water is in the lower Chesapeake watershed...amazing diversity.   Next time I plan to invest in a guide as much for the education as for the fish.