Gearing up for Smallmouth

Intro | Gear | Food | Tactics | Catfish | Clouser

Waders and felt-soled shoes, Stream Cleats, or Korkers are the usual wading attire, but in summer many anglers wet-wade with the above footwear. A boat can certainly enhance your mobility, but there is no lack of productive easy-to-wade public water. In many places you can wade across the river during summer, especially in drier years.


There are thousands of braids and islands to explore on the Susquehanna. During summer, there is plenty of safe, wadeable wader. When the water warms, many anglers prefer to wet-wade the river.

You can use whatever line-weight rod is most comfortable for you, but most experienced fly casters on the river say a 7- or 8-weight outfit is standard. In the downstream stretches, where most of the fishing is done by boat, and in the middle areas, from Marysville north to around Liverpool, which contain most of the better wadeable stretches, many fly fishers use floating weight-forward lines.

Mike O'Brien, who guides on the river's upper stretches and especially on the West Branch, says sinking-tips and sinking lines are important alternatives for his anglers. The river in those parts is narrower with long deep pools, and floating lines often may not get flies deep enough. Clouser also uses sinking lines to get deep.

Evening dry-fly action on 4- to 5-weight rods can frequently translate into 30-fish days. Most of the fish range from 10 to 13 inches long, but they are wild free risers, and strong. In riffle water even small fish often make fantastic leaps to throw the fly.

Casting sinking baitfish and hellgrammite flies will net more bass over 15 inches, but truly large bass are rare. Some of the deepest pools, especially in the series of impoundments below Middletown or in some of the deep holes of the North and West branches dish up occasional trophy bass.

Any standard trout reel will work, though it helps to have a quality drag to prevent backlashing. Only occasionally will a fish take you into your backing; they are more acrobats than distance runners.

In all his years of fishing the Susquehanna Bob Clouser has seen few fish over six pounds and has himself landed only seven over the five-pound mark. Yet the consistency and widespread action rate high with most anglers, and the river's reputation has been built on numbers of smaller fish regularly interspersed with two- to three-pounders.

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