Can't sleep night before

[Jeff Little]

I'm meeting Matt in the morning. We hope to eek out a few hours of water clarity before the 2 plus inches that fell north of us rolls down the Susky. You can see it on the graphs. The Juniata is clear, but up near Mapleton Depot a slug is coming. That will take 2 days to hit Harrisburg. The two slugs I am more worried about started this afternoon (see Bloomsburg on N. Branch and Williamsport on West Branch), and can already be seen in Sunbury. I bet it's an early blitz with quickly deteriorating clarity. I have black spinnerbaits and crankbaits tied on.

So how many of you have trouble sleeping the night before? It's kind of like Christmas Eve when you were a kid! Here comes Smallie Claus.

[melonpepper]

I hear ya Jeff,
I get the same way before a trip trying to figure out what I'm gonna catch all the lunkers on and how I'm going to rig up some magic. Most of the time it pans out into nothing and I do my catching on something really silly. And i think to myself about all that wasted time of lost sleep.

Anyway I was up in the area of Bloom to Sunbury today and all points in between, any water I seen was high, almost flash flood stage in some areas,
and running chocolate.

Good Luck

[Jeff Little]

I'll let you know. I'm hoping the backsides of the islands in the Juniata band of water will stay clean long enough to do well early in the day. It should be an interesting day...

[PA-Smallies]

I can't sleep now and I'm not leaving till Monday to fish!!! I hear you..I'm the same way!! Sometimes I don't sleep, leave early and grab some breakfast at an all night greasy spoon.

[Dave T]

I always have trouble sleeping the night before... "visions of slab smallies dance in my head".

[MattL]

Just got back a little while ago. I would say the dirty water was arriving just as we did. I would call it "slightly muddy", more than stained but not chocolate milk with pockets of stained. I am not a muddy water fisherman so my confidence level dropped two notches. Good thing it wasn't super windy or I would have been done.

I rigged up a small crankbait but I don't have a "cranking rod" so I used my ml dropshot rod. The problem is I didn't bother removing the 6 lb P-line Floroclear leader. Mistake! I had a nice one hit and throw it, then lost my crank on the next cast. A little while later I had a nice one hit and break right off. He jumped 3 seconds later trying to throw my lure and was a nice one! So about an hour later Jeff goes, "here's your crankbait" and he stretches out his paddle with it on the blade like serving it on a platter. LOL. It floated downstream right to him.

Then I got schooled on tubes. My small jighead exposed hook rig was not doing it. Jeff's method of rigging tubes really shines in conditions like these. I am going to start using that rigging method exclusively starting NOW!

Jeff lost a few nice fish and landed a few nice ones. I lost a few nice fish and landed zero.

We ran some kickin' rapids though and got some good video. There was a bald eagle in the area most of the day too!

[susqypat]

Man... sounds like a nice day even though you didn't catch any bigguns. I had wanted to get out this morning, before the water got dirty, but unfortunately 1 wife and 3 small kids kept that from happening. Although I did get to put up the pulley system for my new WS Ride, so the day wasn't a total loss.

[PA-Smallies]

Got you a RIDE hugh...I really like mine! I'm thinking about putting an "removable" anchors system of some type on it.

Originally Posted by Dave T

I always have trouble sleeping the night before... "visions of slab smallies dance in my head".

Me too! Dave, I hope you and your son join our little NB Suskie fishing adventure on either 8/15, 8/16 or both!

[HookUp]

Beer. Plenty of beer.