February Susquehanna River Report With A Susquehanna River Guide

By Lance Dunham

This month the push is on to finish getting ready for the new fishing season. With the exception of a good cleaning, the boat is ready to go. I’ve installed new bucket style seats in cammo print of course, courtesy of my sons Christmas gift cards he gave me, he always knows what dad needs. The guys up at Snake Creek Marine have my 115/80HP Merc running good as new. The owner, Allen Coy and the guys know that I can’t afford to be down for repairs even one day so when I asked them to go over the boat and trailer and make them run like new again I said, “whatever it takes”! I’m always curious as to what they may find to improve the boat and trailer. Last season they installed some custom trailer bunks for me so I could load the boat on the trailer in fast current. It’s always amusing and easy to tell on a fast river which boaters are the experienced ones and which ones are the Newbies. The Newbies will try to get lined up straight behind the trailer about 20ft and shoot in before the current pushes them by. Quite often they will run over the trailer bunks, crushing or bending them over. Last season I saw a guy come in too fast and completely miss the trailer when the strong current pushed his boat down river. He crashed into the river bank putting a pretty good dent in the bow of his boat. I can say I was amused because many years ago I was the same guy. Lucky when I started my boats were pretty cheap and full of dents anyways. Now with twenty thousand dollar plus bass boats out there it pays to be much more careful. The proper way to load your boat on your trailer in a fast current is to go slow with your bow into the current parallel with the shore line. When you get to the trailer just hook the bow on the down river edge of the trailer bunk, give some gas and turn into the trailer. When you are straight with the trailer give it enough power to push you up on the trailer far enough so you can hook the bow winch on and finish the job. Yes it might take some practice but soon you will get the hang of it. The side pressure of the water on the boat and trailer bunks can be tremendous so the bunks must be made to withstand these pressures. My one bunk was starting to bend out a little with all the use I gave it so they reinforced the custom bunk by wielding on braces. A nice little improvement. Some fishing line got into one of the trailer wheel bearings and wiped it out so a new one was installed. That could have been a bad thing to have your trailer wheel bearing burn up on the way to a charter. They installed an automatic bilge pump for me so I don’t have to pay attention to that and I asked them to install an automatic aerator in the live well that keeps the water fresh and full of oxygen so the fish don’t get stressed out while in transit in a tournament situation. Tournament! Lance you don’t do tourneys!  Well that’s true and I have never been a big supporter of them either but then I’ve never been in a catch and release tourney and it was always hard to be fair and objective about them. So when Alan Probst of the “All Outdoors With Alan Probst” TV show asked me to be in a river tourney with him this summer I said sure, lets find out what this is all about. We will be going into this with an open mind, enter as contestants and see what happens. Yes the TV camera will be along. Yes we will most likely be soundly beaten because as I told Alan, it would be very hard to beat a local angler in a local tourney on his home waters. Heck, that’s part of the reason anglers want me to guide for them up here. I know all the spots in my 70 mile territory where the fish hide out during each season and condition of the year. But one thing is for sure, we will have fun! I told Alan that the only person I got to beat is him and I’ve done my job for the day, hee, hee, hee. We’ll see, Alan seems to get better every time we do a show and is a very good jig fisherman. He often catches more fish than I do on his show now but I still seem to be lucky enough to get the larger ones. Good, bad, or downright ugly, I’ll tell you about it later this year.

   The other thing that I did this month was to make new plastic creature baits out of old plastic worms. You see my boat goes through about 1800 plastic worms of various shapes each year and I accumulate a big bag, oh about the size of a plastic shopping bag of used worms each season. So instead of throwing them into the trash I decided to recycle them this year and make new creature baits out of them. I bought the aluminum pour molds and I thought I was ready to go. The instructions said, or at least what I read of them was to use in a well ventilated area. I figured the downstairs bathroom had a ceiling ventilator so that would be fine. Now what to use for heat to melt them in? My wife had a small microwave in the kitchen, yep I figured that would do. What kind of bowl to melt them in? I dug around in the wife’s cooking cabinet and found her Pyrex two cup measuring cup, yep I’m sure she won’t mind. Now when to start? Now I’m not that dumb so I waited until Sunday to try the deed. I knew she usually went to church and then sometimes visited with her Mom afterward giving me several if not many hours of man time to experiment with this new endeavor. Well Sunday came, my dear wife went to church and I quickly put my plan into action. I got everything set up and put about a cup of old worms in the 2 cup measure and turned on the microwave that I had placed in the bathroom. The first thing I learned from all the sparks going on in the microwave is to wash off all the old dirt and grime from the worms before you start! The next thing I quickly learned is that when they say to use in a well ventilated area they really meant it! I guess I cooked it too long because when I opened that microwave door the smoke coming off that plastic was bad enough to knock down a bull moose! It stung my eyes, burnt my nose, made me nauseous, and I’m sure I lost at least a few more brain cells in the process. I flew the window open, brought in two more fans and aired out the place for an hour! I then rushed off to Walmart because I found out that burnt plastic doesn’t come out of microwaves and Pyrex measuring cups, the smell never leaves! Good thing I didn’t use her new over the range microwave! I have since moved the operation out of the house, bought a good respirator, and have successfully made creature baits from old plastic worms without loosing anymore brain cells. The whole ordeal didn’t cost over a couple of hundred bucks to make a 35 cent creature bait. Well that’s all I’ve got for this month. Next month I’ll be on the river! For further reports, photos, and chartering information please visit me on my website at www.ldguideservice.com . Fish safely and I’ll see you on the river.