George Acord Jr. has heard it all when it comes to anglers' opinions on the state of the Susquehanna River's smallmouth bass fishery.
"If a guy goes out there in the middle of July and has three bad days in a row, that means everything's dead," said Acord, co-owner of Susquehanna Fishing Tackle in Lancaster, who guides bass anglers on the river.
Meanwhile, Acord has been enjoying some of the best smallmouth fishing he's ever seen on the river.
"We are having legendary catches of smallmouths — 60-, 70- even 100-fish days," he said. "Believe me, the fish are there."
That said, however, Acord knows there's something wrong with the Susquehanna which could negatively impact the future of this world-famous smallmouth fishery.
This past spring, Acord said he noticed "clouds" of smallmouth fry in the river.
Come fall, however, those fish were nearly all gone.
"Something is killing a lot of bass when they're pretty young," he said. "What it is, I don't know, but there's no reproduction problem. I think it's a water-quality problem."
What's wrong with the Susquehanna?
If Robert Bachman, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission board member from Denver who represents the sixth district, which includes Lancaster County, has asked that question once, he's asked it a thousand times.
"Personally, I believe the problem is with the water quality," he said. "What we know for sure is something is killing a lot of the bass and we need to do something about it."
• • •
Surfing the Internet last week, I visited the Fish and Boat Commission's site and found prominently displayed on the home page a link to "Biologist Report — smallmouth bass populations in the Susquehanna River."
Clicking on the tab, I was led to a series of charts presenting data gathered during nighttime electrofishing excursions that agency biologists conducted Sept. 21-24 from Sunbury downriver to Middletown.
At first glance, the charts seem to paint a horrific picture of the status of smallmouth populations on the river.
Not many fish of any size were caught, and the hourly catch rate of 2.6 bass measuring 15 inches or greater was way down from the long-term average of 6.2 bass per hour.
Jeff Smith, the Fish and Boat Commission's Susquehanna River biologist who led the electrofishing survey, assured me I shouldn't sell all my smallmouth fishing gear just yet.
"You can't look at one year for anything," he said. "There are too many variables that affect things from year to year — high water, low water, temperature.
"This is a natural environment and environmental conditions do fluctuate."
For example, columnaris — a bacterial disease that has ravaged young bass on the Susquehanna in recent years — did not seem to be a major issue this past year, Smith said.
"But then again, we had good water flows this year, and [columnaris] tends to be worse in low-flow years," he said.
The agency conducts electrofishing surveys during the same time periods, in the same locations, every year to develop a long-term picture of the health of smallmouth bass populations on the Susquehanna.
Using that approach, Smith said, he sees some definite trends.
First, he said, there is a climbing mortality rate among young-of-the-year fish.
Second, he said, the bass that do survive are living longer than they used to.
"We're seeing good numbers of 8-to-10-year-old fish, which is pretty much the maximum life expectancy of a smallmouth," he said. "Historically, we haven't seen so many fish living that long."
That bass are living long is a good thing.
That the young mortality rate is rising is not.
"Especially when you consider that those bass one day will be your big bass," Smith said. "If you have fewer of them surviving at a young age, you're going to have fewer of them living to old age."
Exactly what is killing those young bass, Smith said, is something scientists can't say yet definitively.
"We know the nutrients and low dissolved oxygen are problems," he said. "Whether or not they are the root of the problem, or if they are just magnifying the real problem, we don't know."
• • •
Low dissolved oxygen.
Excessive nutrients.
Both have been in the news recently, named as plagues to the Chesapeake Bay.
With the blessing of President Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency is working on a plan to improve the health of the bay by requiring the states within its watershed to clean up their acts, so to speak.
States, counties and municipalities are likely to be required to reduce the amount of raw sewage and nutrient-laden runoff that ends up heading downstream to the bay.
Such measures should cut the nutrient load feeding the bay, which should reduce algae blooms that suck up tons of oxygen in the water.
Since the Susquehanna River is the bay's leading source of freshwater, it's easy to understand that the river's and bay's problems with water quality mirror each other.
If water quality is the root of the smallmouth bass population's problem, there isn't anything the Fish and Boat Commission can do to improve the situation, Bachman said.
"We have no control over what gets dumped into the river," he said. "What we can do is tell everyone who will listen that the river is an impaired fishery that needs to be improved."
One thing that is in the commission's power to control is harvest pressure on the river.
Bachman said it has been suggested that only catch-and-release fishing for smallmouths on the Susquehanna be allowed.
"What we don't know is, will that have any measurable impact on the population?" he said. "We don't want to do something that's really not going to have any effect."
As Acord noted, fishing already is catch-and-release for the Susquehanna's most vulnerable bass.
No bass under 15 inches can be harvested at any time of the year, and, for nine months, no bass under 18 inches can be taken.
"It's the smaller fish that are dying, and they're the ones that are protected already," he said. "How are you going to save a 9-inch bass by changing the current rules?"
• • •
Impaired or not, the Susquehanna River is still an awesome place to catch smallmouths, according to Acord.
Anglers would do well to adjust their expectations and fishing tactics, he said.
"If you fish off Columbia in the dead of summer, you're probably not going to do as well now as you used to," he said.
When the river's running low in July and August, water temperatures rise and the amount of oxygen in the water falls.
"I believe the bass go nocturnal under those conditions," Acord said.
Anglers who fish the same areas in early spring and in fall will find plenty of bass, according to Acord.
"I've never seen a stocking truck out there, so those bass didn't show up overnight," he said. "The bass are in the river, but they move around to adjust to conditions."
Smith agreed, noting that some of the places where he electrofished in September and caught no bass produced dramatically different results a few weeks later when he was back out sampling the river for walleyes.
"You couldn't net a walleye without catching a bunch of smallmouths," he said. "And just a few weeks earlier, we didn't catch any in the same place. So they do move around a great deal."
Acord said the best fishing months for smallmouths on the river seem to be March through May and October through December.
"The guys who fish in the summer and say everything's dead ought to try fishing in the spring and fall," he said. "I'll bet they have a different story then."
P.J. Reilly is the Sunday News' outdoors writer. E-mail him at preilly@lnpnews.com.
