OC report 09/24

[Captain Fred Archer]

Larry,

A great day, a happy crew and some neat picts...thanks a bunch. And thanks for the memories that you gave a certain ex-east coast old guy.

Like, white marlin. I don't say it much, but for the longest time my favorite billfish was the white one, in spite of having caught sails, blues and blacks. The are such spectacular fighters, were often abundant and always beautiful. The striped marlin finally replaced them as #1 in my book, but they and whitey are kissin' cousins in many ways, but the striper is bigger and down south, incredibly abundant at times. They are very much alike, just about any way that you can think of, so I guess that's why they are #1 and #2 for me.

Now this next memory that I'm thanking you for might seem a pretty strange one. It's brackish water largemouth bass. Back in the (long ago) days when I was a hard core tournament bass fisherman, I stumbled upon that area and those fish. And the place we chose to launch was a ramp by the big bridge at Havre de Grace. At first we fished up the river a bit and caught some nice smallmouths, always one of my favorites. They fought like hell, but that wasn't too surprising - smallmouth all fight like hell.

The Flats were long known as a striped bass hot spot, but back then I could care less about stripers, so having studied the charts a bunch before going down there from North Jersey for that first two day trip, we blasted across the flats to a place on the chart called The Northeast River.

There I met my first brackish water largemouth and was blown away at how fast and especially how strong that thing was. I hooked him up cranking a big, Bagley's Balsa B on one side of the entrance to a little marina on the left, just as you entered the river. It was a five pounder that hit and ran so fast and powerfully that I didn't know what the heck I'd hooked, except that it "couldn't be a bass!" But it was. And he was uglier than a junkyard dog, very silver, pale green, and with some big, black spots on him. My comment to my buddy at the time was, "Jeez, he's ugly, but he was the strongest, fastest damned bass I've ever hooked. It fought way more like a saltwater fish than a freshwater one!"

I really didn't make the connection to the salt in the brackish water as far as that first fish was concerned, but as we caught more of them it became crystal clear that those critters were nothing like the pure, sweet water versions. We figured it had to be the salt content in the water and maybe even surviving in an environment with big stripers and flounders and those nasty blue claws after them all of their lives simply made those that avoided that stuff double tough.

Long story short, I fell in love with the place and the fish and made many trips down there to fish for those hard fighters that averaged five pounds and as an aside, were especially good eating too. We fished every river that we could get to, launching from either the Northeast or Havre de Grace, depending on where we were heading and the wind.

I just have to tell you this story. I had a bass fishing buddy named Ernie Jenderko from Pennsylvania who often trailered down, met me at the ramp, and we'd run across the flats themselves to the different rivers. (This was a lot of years after I'd discovered The Flats myself.) By that time we both had really fast bass boats with big engines, both blueprinted 150's. His was a black and orange ProCraft and I was running a red and white Hydra Sports at the time. Early in the mornings while making some long runs across the flats, Earnie loved to get racing me and I reciprocated. We'd be hauling ass, throwing big, showy roostertails and having a ball in general on the long runs across the flats.

As most know, your area was and is renowned for its huge population of Canada geese. And I'm sure you know that huge flocks up them used to raft up overnight out on the flats. Well, one morning we were hauling ass alongside each other, not racing, just honking along, when I spotted a huge raft of the feathery kind of honkers directly in front of us.

We were closing on them at sixty mph and I saw the heads coming up and the necks stretching up as we rocketed in on them with an early morning wakeup call of sorts. I began to take an evasive manuever and started gradually slowing down, but when I glanced over at Earnie, he was watching me and making a few obscene gestures that he was fond of with a huge grin on his face. I frantically waved in front of us, but he later told me that he took it for a "come on, I'm gonna beat ya", so he slammed the foot pedal down and with the smile still on his face, turned to look where he was going.

Whereupon he shot directly into and then under this huge flock of geese, which thundered up out of the water and in the process, did what geese do when they first get up in the first place, and what they do when an orange and black, howling "thing" goes whipping through them at sixty mph plus.

That's right, they SHAT, and a great, green curtain of goose poo fell into the air in front of Earnie and his Pro Craft, which was already jerking around and skittering on its pad as Earnie reacted in shock and tried to both get control of the boat and slow down while literally being blinded by a sheer green wall of stinky, green goose shit!

It was all over in a flash. Ernie's boat was sitting still in the water, the geese were flapping and honking curses above him, and he was covered, head to foot, with The Gooey Stank. This included the helmet with the clear vizor that he wore for bug protection, etc. when hauling ass. It was actually a pityful sight, but of course, it blew my every loving mind and I collapsed behind the wheel, laughing my ass off at what I'd just seen and now, the incredibly funny looking aftermath, good old Earnie, usually a very reserved fellow with a lousy sense of humor, looking like he just fell into shite, but didn't come out smelling like the proverbial rose! What a day on those Susquehanna Flats!

Yep, some special memories brought back by mentioning your home port, including one very funny one. Now me, I've got a damned good sense of humor, so from that day on, whenever I wanted to bust Earnie's chops in a crowd, I'd say, "Hey Erny, tell 'em about the day you did the goose step out on The Flats, Mr. Fast Boat!" He never did talk about it. I did, of course, and all I ever got back from him was a seriously bad case of stink eye, which of course damned near caused me to pee in my pants!

Thanks for the memories of whitey, The Flats and rivers, and them bad azzed basses, and of course, Gooey Green Ernie!

[Hroonk]

Hey Fred, thanks for the great stories. I basically grew up on the flats and often take the area for granted....spend more time trying to get out on the salt water instead of enjoying what's in my backyard, but that's what I did for the first 25 years of my life!

Anyway, here's some pics from the Flats or Susky river....and as you may guess, I know those flats well for geese and ducks.



I can't seem to find where I uploaded a lot of my body booting pics, but here's just a few.





And one old school of my dad...