For nine years now, Lancaster County anglers have been blessed to have a world-class fishery in their backyard.

Just over an hour's drive from the city, the Susquehanna River empties into the head of the Chesapeake Bay on what's called the Susquehanna Flats.

Here, each spring, ocean-run striped bass and the bay's resident stripers follow the runs of migratory bait fish such as herring up the bay and mill around the shallow Flats.

When the water temperature gets warm enough — about now — they'll head down-bay into moving-water tributaries to spawn.

But while they're in the 8-mile-long by 5-mile-wide Flats, and the conditions are right, it can be like manna from heaven for fishers.

What makes the Flats unique is that water depth ranges from 2 to 20 feet. Hooked fish can't dive down, so they run and churn the surface, bending rods and making reels sing. When you have big stripers up to 40 pounds doing the running, or exploding on top-water lures in open-mouth assaults that look like shark attacks, it just doesn't get any better.

For surprisingly many years, including the striper moratorium years of 1985-1989, this incredible fishing opportunity was known to relatively few local anglers, who would catch and release the stripers during the spring fling.

In 1999, after some controversy over whether recreational fishing would harm the stripers, Maryland officials set up an annual catch-and-release season on the Flats.

All went well in the beginning. But over time the cat escaped the bag and the Flats C&R opportunity exploded in the fishing world. Lure and fly fishers flocked to a 15-mile-long catch-and-release zone.

Some years, it's been ugly. Up to 300 boats can be out there bobbing around, looking for schools of fish.

There are breaches of fishing etiquette. Guides are followed. Anglers scan the water with binoculars looking for bent rods, then zoom off to get in on the action.

But as long as anglers were catching fish, few complained, figuring it was a price of fame.

But now, for five or six consecutive seasons, the fishing has been off. The last couple years, dirty water and other poor conditions could be blamed. But this spring, water clarity and temperature were ideal.

Still, except for some nice bait fishing early on and a late flurry in recent days at season's end, the fishing has been chillingly slow.

Many anglers have burned increasingly expensive fuel in their vehicles and boats, only to come home frustrated. In a fishery where 100-fish days were not uncommon, this year has produced plenty of skunks.

Anglers are selling their boats. Guides have canceled trips, feeling too guilty to take their clients' money for a fish or two.

Frustration and speculation has taken center stage on the Chesapeake Angler message board at tidalfish.com.

What's wrong with the Flats?

Sentiment ranges broadly, from another striper moratorium is needed to making stripers catch-and-release baywide. Some blame the fish mycobacteria that's killing young stripers in the bay. Still others say nothing is wrong if you know where to fish and put in your time.

"It's over. Too much pressure on the Flats and (Susquehanna) River and too much overfishing, period," fumed one poster on the Web site. "Everybody, especially the Navy men from Pennsylvania, should stick to trout fishin' and leave the few Flats fish alone that are left."

But plenty of Flats veterans and guides — some trained biologists — maintain something is amiss with the bay's striper population.

 "We are a couple bad spawns away from a crash," warns a guide from Crisfield, Md., on the Web forum.

Bill Schotta of Akron has been fishing for stripers on the Flats for nearly 50 years and helped get the catch-and-release season established. He chases stripers for catch and release year-round, following the fish from North Carolina to Cape Cod. His thoughts are widely followed on Internet fishing forums.

"They're taking too many fish out, but nobody will admit it," he says.

Like many Flats anglers, Schotta is critical of the spring trophy season on much of the bay that allows anglers to catch and keep one striper 28 inches or more for 25 consecutive days. Guides and charter boats do a booming business, trolling multiple lines back and forth.

Schotta also thinks too liberal commercial fishing is taking its toll on the striper population. As is more poaching than most people think or acknowledge.

"It's a touchy subject because it's hard to prove anything," says Schotta of the Flats situation. He notes surveys by fish managers show striper populations are healthy.

"I just see all up and down the coast smaller schools and fewer schools and smaller fish and less fish all the time. But the numbers haven't really shown it yet. It's just such a hard thing to prove."

This year, Schotta had four skunks on outings, almost unheard of for him. "I have just lowered my expectations on the Flats significantly," he says. "It's a shame it isn't better."

Bill J. Gouba, 75, of East Petersburg, has been making the spring pilgrimages to the Flats since 1958. Like Schotta, he thinks the trophy season is damaging the health of the striper population, but doesn't see it being eliminated because "it's a political thing to appease charter boat captains.

"They kill these huge fish. Why anyone would want to eat them, I don't know."

But the retired taxidermist stops short of saying striped bass are in trouble in the Chesapeake Bay.

Les Siegrist, 70, has hit the Flats hard each spring since the 1960s. He's seen it so full of stripers that when they moved, a wall of water was pushed forward.

Those who say they have dynamite days on the Flats have no perspective of the heydays, he says.

"I don't quite understand it," he says of the downturn in Flats fishing. But he thinks the trophy season is probably intercepting big breeder stripers destined for the Flats and, more importantly, for spawning.

 Mike Benjamin of North East, Md., is the most accomplished guide on the Flats. His read of the situation is alarming.

"It's going downhill," asserts the 39-year-old. His family runs Herb's Tackle Shop in North East.

The main alarm bell everyone should be heeding, Benjamin says, is the steady decline of the bay's resident stripers, the 18- to 26-inch fish that are vital to replenishing stocks.

Few "schoolie" stripers are even around on the Flats in the summer and fall anymore, he says.

Benjamin, who canceled quite a few trips this spring, mostly blames commercial fishing but also spears the trophy season.

"They need to cut down on what you're keeping and cut down on quotas (for commercial fishing). Before the moratorium was just what we're seeing now. It's going that way, whether anyone wants to listen or not."

Maybe, just maybe, the Flats is a victim of its own fame.

Schotta and others wonder if all those boots zooming repeatedly over fish in shallow water could drive them away from the Flats.

Hardly ready to push the panic button is George Acord, co-owner of Susquehanna Fishing Tackle in Lancaster.

Whether the numbers of stripers are down or not, it can't be based on the success of anglers on the Susquehanna Flats, he suggests, noting that bait fishers had a banner year.

"It's a tough thing to nail down. When you have a migratory fish that is making a spawning migration and you're looking on 38 square miles of water, the variables are so stacked again you.

"It's human nature to point the finger. Let's follow the facts and biologists. Let's not follow our passion."