I am here tonight, in a still house. Putting a dog down is never easy – coming home to the quiet of a dog’s absence, is even harder. I walk in and there is no longer a greeting. Our Maddie had a bit of separation anxiety and was often found just inside the door waiting any time her people left her. I am eating pizza – comfort food for an uncomfortable day – and as I work toward the crust, I am reminded how much she loved a piece of crust. Her toys lay about – her brush is still full of her hair. Her water and food bowls are not empty – she had no hunger amidst the pain of the osteoarthritis that ravaged her body on that last day. I turn to shut off the outside lights and am reminded that I would normally walk her beforehand.
Other triggers await as if in ambush – dogs being walked with wagging tails, a young grandson wondering where she went, neighbors asking afterwards, and the vet bill, her remains in a box, and paw prints.
A dog cannot communicate like us humans, but I think she knew. Osteoarthritis plagued her in later years – she could not sit up straight on her hind legs; with time she needed help just getting up to a couch or bed.
But life goes on and you take these things in stride, still wondering whether she should have been appreciated all the more.
Maddie on her “gotcha” day, at 5 months old.
In her last 2 years of life, she was my constant companion as I transitioned from work to retirement to getting our Vestal house ready to sell and finally selling it. My wife was up at our house in Rochester – wherever I went Maddie would go.
Now it is a quiet time. My wife is in bed after the long emotional day. It is just me and the fire on this cold November evening and a glance toward her corner reminds me. Dogs are, as my son reminded me on our drive home on that final day, one of the great human experiments. That experiment began with a wolf that hung at a distance in the din of a fire, and gradually accepted scraps. And it still evolves with hundreds of distinct breeds, designed to help man in all ways, from detecting bombs to therapy for dying humans, to companionship.
In my mourning, I somehow stumbled on an account of a little boy, who witnessed his own dog being put down in the company of his family. The family was very attached to their dog, an Irish Wolfhound called Belker, but nobody was more attached to this dog than 6-year-old Shane, the little boy. The family had taken their dog to the vet, only to find that the 10-year-old dog had cancer and that nothing could be done for him. The vet offered to euthanize Belker in their home, and after much discussion, Shane’s parents agreed that it would be good for Shane to be there so that he might learn something from the experience, given how attached he was to Belker.
The time came yet Shane seemed very calm. He was stroking his dog in a way that suggested acceptance, and it was as if both him and the dog understood that this was goodbye. Belker slipped away peacefully within a matter of minutes. Shane didn’t cry nor did he show any signs of distress. He knew it needed to happen and he knew Belker was in a better place. Afterwards, the family asked, in discussion, ‘why are animal’s lives so much shorter than our own?’ Shane sat quietly before saying “I know why” and went on to explain that people are born so they can live a good life. They need to love everyone all the time and be nice. Dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t need to spend their entire lives learning how to do it. That’s why they don’t stay as long
I am writing this as my own therapy, for a dog who loved unconditionally and gave her life for my good and the good of our family. Stack the monumental progress of humans against that, and I assure you, there’s no comparison. We will miss you Maddie…
The following blog post was originally published on 12/5/2014, as an update on our adoption of Maddie. Her official “gotcha” day was February 23, 2013. We believe she was born in September 2013.
Those who follow this blog know a little about Maddie. I posted a piece on our adoption of her, or perhaps I should say her adoption of my family. She was a “return”. Previous owners had adopted her as a young puppy, but we believe may have found her too much to handle. So, she was lovingly taken back by her foster shelter, Every Dog’s Dream, in Greene, NY, and after we saw her photo, it was, as they say, love at first sight…
Most people know that Labs love the water. But Hound / Lab mixes like Maddie – well, I wasn’t so sure. Maddie is a Treeing Walker Coonhound and Labrador Retriever cross. She has the ears of a Lab, the head of a coonhound, the coat of a Lab and the tail and deeper chest of a coonhound.
The Treeing Walker Coonhound…
She’ll bay like a coonhound, even stand up to a tree if she’s chased a squirrel, yet she also has a deep bark that warns with authority. She’s goofy, playful, wicked fast, retrieves, and loves her toys…
A dog’s gotta have toys…
Maddie first met water not long after we adopted her in February of 2013. And beautiful Jones Park in Vestal was the site of our first forays in field and stream. Maddie loved the snow and the woods, but ice and water took some getting used to. The first time I crossed the brook there, she paced back and forth on the other side, whining aloud before finally being coaxed across the frozen surface of the brook. From there on though, she started liking water, and these days that little brook is a favorite of hers.
Beautiful Jones Park – Maddie’s intro to the wonderful world of woods and water…
But that was generally shallow wading with the exception of a few plunge pools. It took most of the following summer before the Susquehanna River dropped low enough for easy wading and the perfect opportunity to introduce Maddie to real swimming and maybe even some river fishing. My first trial would be a “no pressure” jaunt to an area above the Campville fishing access where there was a lot of water with a gradual transition and areas shielded from river current. We took a ride there one Sunday summer afternoon. While I had my fly rod, the goal was to wet wade and fish casually, inviting Maddie to join the water and “fish” with me.
It’s never an issue getting Maddie to take a ride in the car. Open any door and she’s eager to climb in and take up position in the back seat. She’ll then plant both front feet on the center console and look forward, or roam across the back bench seat, poking her head out either open window, ears flapping in the wind. It’s a sight to see in a little Subaru Outback and reminds me that one day I really do need to get a pick-up truck…
Cruising and scoping out the countryside, Maddie style…
So after we arrived at the large DEC access, I took a few minutes to rig up, and then set off up-river, through the woods. Maddie was all over the place in her usual land rover style; sniffing, marking, chasing chipmunks and squirrels – all good doggie stuff. We walked out to a large rocky bar on the river and there we did a little wading as I cast my line. Maddie never strays afar – possibly an attachment issue from her past. She was right by me the whole time. I waded into the river until she almost moon-walked the bottom – and that was good enough for our first adventure. I didn’t want to push it.
An intro – Maddie wades the Susquehanna shallows…
The following week we repeated the same exercise. Maddie was a lot friskier, chasing plovers, wading in where I fished while watching the fly line where it entered the water. We waded deeper this time but I wasn’t having much luck with the bass. Eventually we headed to a feeder creek with a very deep hole. I spied a bass in the hole and cast my olive soft hackle bugger across the pool. It was like ringing a dinner bell as 4 bass quickly emerged from the green depths. These fish had most likely been trapped in this hole all summer – the feeder creek tailed out to a slight trickle before entering the river – and as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers in a spot like that. The biggest of the bass struck my fly aggressively, not wanting to let such a meal get by, and a good tussle began. The fish darted towards the security of a downfall and root ball. I put the brakes on while hollering for Maddie. I lipped the bass, removed the hook, gave Maddie a chance to say hello, and then released the bass. Maddie literally dove right into the hole in pursuit and soon experienced water without bottom. She came dog-paddling back, no worse for wear, and a certified swimmer!
Surveying the faster water and making Dad a little nervous from afar…
I was thrilled, but never doubted she could do it. So we returned to the river the following week with a plan to explore a little more. I wondered, would she travel down to the honey hole – the one where the bass could be big – the one I loved to fish?
We got to the access and this time took a wooded path downriver. The path paralleled the river for a bit and then veered off along a river braid. As we hiked, Maddie would dash down to the river braid and then charge back up to find me, flying up 6 foot banks like they were nothing. Soon we came out where the river braid re-entered the river at a beautiful bay that I love to fish…
This is sweet water for fly fishing and fishing this spot gave Maddie the opportunity to explore the river-side and take a swim.
Loving the river…
Soon after arriving, I cast and swung my olive soft hackle bugger through a chute of water from the river braid and that proved to be a little too much for one nice bass. The fish took the fly solidly and went airborne with the hook-set. Maddie rushed in deep where the bass zigged and zagged, trying to intercept it. At one point it darted between her legs!
A nice smallmouth landed with aid of a water dog – note the paw in the upper left…
Soon enough I had the bass lipped, then removed the fly and put it down for a picture – Maddie’s paw included. Maddie began pawing the bass as I put my camera away and that was enough to send it off in a big swag of its tail.
Soon after hook removal, an errant “pat on the back” sent this bass fleeing…
But as the saying goes, all good things must end. So it was for our river sojourns. Not long after enjoying these visits to the Susquehanna, the rains came, the river rose, and then the cold swept in. Summer faded to fall and then to “see you next year”. No matter, it was great to have a fishing buddy on the river with me…
Relaxing on the deck with a glass of wine after a good day on the river…
And borrowing a prophecy picture from my original post on Maddie, I’d say she’s turned out to be quite a friend for a fly fisher…
The following blog post was originally published soon after my family adopted our wonderful dog, Maddie. Her official “gotcha” day was February 23, 2013. We believe she was born in September, 2013.
If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
Will Rogers
Will Rogers said it best: dogs aregood. They live their short lives on this earth looking up to whomever walks into their lives and this goes back to early man who was looking for a guardian, hunting companion, and beast of burden.
Dogs have come a long way, all in service to man…
Dogs don’t judge; they are the very essence of unconditional love. Come home from after a bad day, depressed, tired, even angry, and though they’ve been home all alone, they come to you, tail wagging, as if Jesus Christ had just come back to earth.
Long are the tales of a dog’s absolute devotion and loyalty. Hidesamuro Ueno brought his dog, an Akita named Hachiko, to Tokyo in 1924 and every day when he left for his teaching job, Hachiko would stand by the door and watch him go. The Akita would then arrive at the local train station at 4 p.m. to meet his owner when he returned from work. Ueno later died of a stroke at work, but Hachiko continued to return to the train station every single day for the next 10 years until his death in 1935. A bronze statue stands at Shibuya Station in honor of Hachiko.
Hachiko: loyal to the end…
Then there’s Hawkeye, the Labrador retriever, that showed dogs too suffer from heartbreak. During Navy SEAL John Tumilson’s funeral, Hawkeye was seen ambling up to his owner’s coffin and then dropping to the ground with a heaving sigh.
Hawkeye grieves for his fallen owner. No greater love…
Indeed, I remember my grandmother once saying she never trusted any person who didn’t like dogs…
Up until very recently, I’d been dog-less for too long. I grew up with dogs, after all, starting with Cocker Spaniels, thanks to my grandparents who bred and showed them. Blue Bay was their kennel – home to many champions of conformation and obedience. Years later my wife and I owned Basenjis, a unique hound breed out of Africa, known to many as the ‘barkless dog’. We showed Kephas (our male) and Yodie (our female), and after finishing them as AKC Champions, they had a litter of 5 puppies. The litter pick, Blue Bay’s Violet Memory, was named in honor of my grandmother and was my way of thanking her for bringing dogs into my life. ‘Violet’ produced many champions. One of her descendents was the first black and white Basenji to win the breed at Westminster.
Kephas and Yodie passed on, as all dogs do, and we took a break from dogs. It was nice at first not having to walk a dog in the pouring rain or frigid cold, shouting under one’s breath every expletive known to man in front of ‘just go…!’, and yes, the house seemed a lot cleaner, dirty laundry left undisturbed, cherry cheesecakes not yanked off tables, etc., etc., but after a few years without panting and yodeling and all those dog antics – comic and touching – well, something was missing. My wife stood fast for a while, claiming she wanted to enjoy the house ‘chew-free’, until out of the blue, she noticed this picture in the news…
Those eyes…
The rest, as they say, is history. A week after noticing this Lab / Hound mix, we all went to see her. The bond was immediate and magical. It wasn’t another week before she was brought to us, courtesy of Every Dog’s Dream, a pet shelter in Greene, NY. Maddie wagged her way into our lives and where my wife saw a good walking companion, I immediately dreamed of a fly-fishing friend.
Maddy…
It turns out that Maddy was one of a litter of 4 puppies born somewhere in South Carolina. The litter had been left to a high-kill shelter, where dogs are put down if not adopted in 90 days. Fortunately, Maddie and her littermates were sent north. Audrey at Every Dog’s Dream referred to Maddie as an adorable, big-hearted girl who had good manners and liked being close to her humans. Our adoption proved she was more than right.
While pure-bred dogs have their place in life and certainly serve a purpose, the sheer number of homeless dogs continues to sky-rocket. Many of these dogs are real gems, such as we have found in Maddie, and all they’re looking for is a chance to warm a heart.
My plans for Maddie include lots of love and play, obedience training, and ultimately, a seat beside me on the way to flowing waters.
I know the Lab part of her breeding will win her over to water and I’ll promise her this…
“Oh the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.” ― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.
Ecclesiastes 3:1
My phone buzzed with an incoming text while I built a fire in my fireplace. It was my cousin’s husband, John.
“Did u get much snow?” John texted, in his characteristically straightforward prose.
I responded with a picture out our back french doors.
We parried back and forth a bit, John taunting me with the 50 degree weather he was having in North Carolina and his plans to fish. “Should have some luck with the bass.” he texted.
I replied simply with “bastard!” and added another log to the now growing fire. Then I poured a glass of Langevulin and settled down to the business of rod wrapping snake guides on an 8-weight fly rod I was building.
Outside my little study, the wind howled and the white stuff was flying nearly horizontal. The temperature had been falling by the hour since morning. Snow piled high on the ground and blew in tall drifts. And the more I thought about the winter weather, the more thankful I was for being trapped by it all.
These days it seems that almost no matter where one lives, there’s an open fishing season to be had. On the one hand, it is nice to be able to get out and shake off the rod rust. The abundance of flexible fishing also provides ample opportunity to fish for species that were once closed to a strict calendar date. Trout, back in the day, were off limits from October through March, the opener dependent on the state. Bass season was also closed through winter. But for me anyhow, the true depths of winter provide a fishing respite in a way – a time to step back, work on gear, re-stock flies, build fly rods, make plans, do maintenance and repair, inventory tackle, and set goals for the year ahead. It’s time to do work the work of Stephen Covey’s 7th Habit – “Sharpen the Saw”.
Covey’s 7th Habit is all about the critical importance of self-renewal. The analogy is the saw – one can use a saw until it dulls. Further sawing just increases the workload and the wear until the sawyer is exhausted, the work utterly inefficient and now ineffective. By my way of thinking, time off from fly fishing is a necessary thing, just as rest is important to effectiveness during our hours awake.
Beyond that, there’s something to be said about absence making the heart grow fonder. When I was a boy, I would look forward to Opening Day through what seemed like an endless winter. The anticipation of that magical day just sweetened the experience all the more. It made one savor every aspect of it – waking early to the smell of hot coffee, and eggs and bacon – the chill of the air, the crunch of the remaining snowpack, the taste of the lunch packed, the anticipation as I drifted a worm through the dark waters of a pool, and the tug, that blissful tug of a trout.
As is said, to everything there is a season. Perhaps we should get back to spending more time on sharpening our fly-fishing saw and storing up that wonder and anticipation of another day astream…
Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher, on staying true to one’s craft.
By all accounts, it had been a great year of fishing. My logbook listed just shy of 50 trips the previous year, excluding many half hour jaunts on my backyard pond to unwind after work. So, during my early spring gear tune-up and overhaul, it didn’t surprise me that my boots were in pretty sad shape.
I contemplated, dare I say, putting them out to pasture. After all, I’d owned them since I started fly fishing some 10 years earlier. I bought them mainly for bass fishing in the rivers – a relatively inexpensive but classic design – and Hodgeman’s no less – still made in America back then. They’d served their master well, and the mantra of this throw-away society hummed away in my head as I looked them over. Those glossy catalogs of the big brand fly fishing purveyors sell a compelling story – faster, lighter, better, tougher…
Oh, the places they took me…
The fly rod may be the heart and soul of a fly fisherman, but its his boots – the workhorse – that get him where he needs to be. They take the most abuse – the lion’s share of wear and tear of all a fly fisher carries. They are rarely in the picture of the beaming fisherman holding up the bounty of the day’s trip. And at the end of the day the weary fisherman unceremoniously sheds them, and stows them out of the light, beneath his waders, the Rodney Dangerfield’s of the angler’s gear – not getting a whole lot of respect. But like the weathered hands of a farmer, a well-used pair of boots has a story. To anyone who sees them, they speak experience astream. And they get better with age – fit better and somehow feel better. So, for these reasons, and the outright economic prudishness these times demand, I reconsidered the death sentence I was about to hand down…
There’s an old shoe repair store on the mostly bypassed main street of my town. The stores that surround it are largely what you’d call mom and pop businesses. Some storefronts are shuttered looking for new owners, the victims of the big box retailers that now line the parkway to the east. This little place sits among them – a classic sign marking its existence. It is busier than one may think.
You won’t find Gucci here, but he could repair them…
So, I went there one day on lunch break, boots in one hand, new Hodgeman’s felts in the other. Inside, the place breathed leather, shoe polish, and glue. Behind the counter was a doorway, a window into the lonely world of the cobbler. In the back of the shop was a long workbench, shoe anvils, all types of tools – awls, picks, and mallets – and racks of laces, shoemakers stitching, and leather. To the left of the counter were the fruits of true craftsmanship – neatly set in racks, tags hanging with names of owners. Every shoe, boot, belt, and handbag was polished. I began to feel good.
Inside that door waits a true cobbler…
The cobbler soon emerged from the back, clad in a heavy leather apron, workshirt, and brimmed hat. His whole appearance, including the neatly trimmed beard covering his jaw, seemed Amish, though I couldn’t be sure, and his hands testified to his work ethic – rough, calloused, and black with polish. His demeanor was pleasant. He studied my boots, turning them in his big hands – pulling the tongue back, examining the sides.
That my boots needed to be re-soled was apparent. The felt was worn thin and, in some places, de-laminated from the boot bottoms. But it’s what I didn’t tell him that he seemed to focus on. “I can re-glue the inside sole”, he said. He continued examining my boots, noting how the stitching on the outer sides was frayed and, in some cases, parted. “I’ll re-stitch these here”, he added. We settled the particulars – I could pick them up in a week. He marked a tag with my name and phone number and set them in a rack of accumulating work. He asked where I fished. The Susquehanna he was not too familiar with – he had canoed a few local lakes, but not the rivers of the Southern Tier. So, for the next half hour I told him about the fishing – the big smallmouth bass, walleyes, channel cats, carp, and musky that could be caught, and then about the wildlife that could be seen – mergansers that flew like sea-skimming missiles up the river and the osprey that dove straight into the river like a rock dropped from the clouds and the eagles that cast big shadows where they flew, and the great blue herons that at a distance in the early morning mist looked like hunched old fisherman working a pool. All these things I had seen because of my boots.
A week later I returned – a sunny spring day full of promise. I picked up my boots, newly clad with bright white felts, neater in appearance, restitched, all put together, and ready for work. The fee was so nominal I can’t recall it now, but for the memories they’d bring me, I should have paid a hell of a lot more.
Mama always said, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Forrest Gump
While perusing Facebook one morning, I came across a picture that rather startled me in both a good and bad way. I’m a Facebook friend of long-time fishing guide, Lance Dunham, and in my feed was a report from a recent outing he made with clients. Typical of Lance were pictures of some very nice smallmouth bass, but there is always a smattering of other species mixed in. This is one reason I have always enjoyed fishing the Susquehanna and its tributaries: the diversity of species the river offers up. On any given day, one can tie into smallmouth bass, fallfish, northern pike, carp, channel catfish, walleye, rock bass, and musky. And Lance’s post proved you can now add another species: the flathead catfish. But whether this is a good or bad species to add to the list is up for speculation over the longer term.
A client of Lance Dunham, fishing guide, shows a flathead catfish caught in the Susquehanna, south of Towanda PA
The flathead catfish has been grabbing news headlines over the years in towns and cities around the lower Susquehanna River. In 2020, a 56 lb. fish was caught, establishing a Pennsylvania state record. 3 years later, the state record was broken again by a 66 lb. flathead caught in the Susquehanna near Conestoga, PA, roughly 30 miles southeast of Harrisburg.
The record-setting angler was fishing with a friend in a very deep channel of the river known as Lake Aldred. He had baited a live rainbow trout onto a large circle hook with a 1.5-ounce sinker. The pair had four lines in the water at once and it wasn’t long before they had 3 hook-ups – landing a 30 pounder, a 45 pounder, and finally the new state record fish.
The current Pennsylvania state record flathead catfish
The huge flathead catfish officially weighed 66 pounds and 6 ounces, exceeding the previous state record by more than 10 pounds and measured 50.25 inches long with a girth of 35 inches. To show just how large flatheads can grow, Pennsylvania’s record is just half the world record, set by a 123 lb. fish caught out of a reservoir in Kansas!
The fish was released alive by the Pennsylvania game warden certifying the record. I found it odd that the angler was using a gamefish for bait, but Pennsylvania allows the use of gamefish for bait as long as they are fished whole. More interesting was the fact that such a fish with a record of being “invasive” was released alive.
Turns out the topic of “invasive” is in itself confusing. The flathead catfish (Pylodictis olivaris) is native to the Mississippi River basin, which includes parts of western Pennsylvania—specifically the Ohio River drainage. So, while it’s native to the greater state of Pennsylvania, it’s only truly native to that western sliver of the state, and certainly not native to the Susquehanna River basin, where it was first detected in 1991. It has since spread rapidly.
Flathead catfish are apex predators, sitting at the top of the food chain. Once introduced to the Susquehanna River, they’ve begun reshaping the ecosystem in dramatic ways that include predation of native species such as smallmouth bass, channel catfish, baitfish, and even crayfish. Their presence also forces other species to change their diets and habitats to avoid competition or predation. Channel catfish, for example, feed lower on the food chain in areas where flatheads are present. And because of this broad dietary overlap, ecological balance can be affected. Smallmouth bass, channel catfish, and carp all feed on crayfish, making the flathead just one more “consumer” of that resource.
Pennsylvania is taking steps to manage this invasive species. There is no creel limit for flatheads, for example, and catfish is a good eating fish. While there is a creel limit for channel cats in Pennsylvania – 50 per day – New York has no creel limit. One has to wonder if at some point these limits will be adjusted due to the flathead’s predilection for eating anything that swims.
In addition to the absence of a creel limit, there is also no mandate that flatheads be killed, such as is the case for snakeheads in Pennsylvania, which must be both killed and reported. In waters like the Delaware and Susquehanna River basins, anglers are only encouraged not to release Flatheads, regardless of size.
The concern of the flathead’s opportunistic predation and its potential to decimate native and recreational fisheries has led a team of researchers from Penn State, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission to assess how flatheads are affecting the food web and energy flow in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania.
Their research found that flatheads had the highest trophic position – the level an organism occupies in a food web, based on its feeding relationships – even higher than resident top predators such as smallmouth bass and channel catfish. Channel catfish had a lower trophic position in areas populated with flathead catfish. This means they had to eat lower in the food chain, likely because they are being outcompeted by flatheads or avoiding them. In areas with flathead catfish, they also found all species showed broader and overlapping diets.
The research suggests that resident species are changing what they eat to avoid competing with or being eaten by the invader. The research also supports the ‘trophic disruption hypothesis,’ that says when a new predator enters an ecosystem, it forces existing species to alter their behavior, diets and roles in the food web. This can destabilize ecosystems over time. The study highlights how an invasive species can do more than just reduce native populations – it can reshape entire food webs and change how energy moves through ecosystems.
In addition to evaluating trophic position, the researchers also analyzed the isotopic niche occupied by the fish species – the range of carbon and nitrogen markers found within the tissues of an organism, reflecting its diet and habitat, providing insights into its ecological role.
To reach their conclusions, the researchers employed stable isotope analysis, a widely used tool that can explain patterns within a food web, highlighting links between trophic positions, as well as the breadth and overlap of trophic niches.
When fish eat, their bodies incorporate the isotopic signature of their food. By sampling their tissues, scientists can measure nitrogen isotopes and determine their diet, carbon isotopes to determine habitat use, and compare isotopic signatures across regions to deduce fish migration or habitat shifts. For this study, channel catfish, smallmouth bass, minnows and crayfish were selected as focal species because a previous diet analysis conducted in collaboration with Penn State, USGS, and Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission researchers within the Susquehanna River, showed that these species are important prey for flathead catfish.
“Flatheads grow fast in this river system, attain large body sizes and can eat a variety of prey,” said study author Olivia Hodgson, a master’s degree student at Penn State University. “Because adult flatheads have few natural predators, flathead catfish can exert strong control over the ecosystem.”
But invasives are nothing new. Zebra mussels, carp, Didymo, hydrilla, rusty crayfish, gobies – our waters have weathered all manner of invasives with different results. The St. Lawrence is one system hugely impacted by zebra mussels. I can recall fishing there in the 90’s when pike were plentiful in vast aquatic weed beds. Zebra mussels changed all of that – the water is now crystal clear, favoring smallmouth bass and diminishing northern pike populations.
I had the opportunity to discuss the invasion of the flathead during an outing with guide local guide Jimmy Kirtland of Row Jimmy’s guide service. Kirtland guides on the Susquehanna and other local rivers for smallmouth bass, channel catfish, and musky. His response to whether flatheads will truly change the fishing was muted, saying there is often a lot of anxiety to the news of invasives, but things tend to work themselves out in the long run and not become the environmental disasters that were originally feared.
The primary method of catching flathead on rod and reel is using live or cut bait. Flatheads are very different from channel catfish. They have relatively small eyes whereas channel catfish have large eyes.
The beady eyes of a flathead…
And flatheads, especially the large ones, prefer live bait, and less so dead or even the stinky kinds of baits used for channel catfish. They prefer to feed at night but can be caught during the day around submerged structure, especially wood snags. The larger fish tend to be loners and will be very aggressive towards any fish, including their own.
But can they be caught on a lure or better yet, the fly? The fact that Lance Dunham’s clients are catching them is evidence of their taking a lure. But the fly? The answer is yes and I didn’t have to look far on the internet to find that answer. Flylords Mag featured an account of an outing by two anglers in eastern North Carolina. While sight fishing for longnose gar on a local river in low, clearwater conditions, these anglers stumbled upon a group of flatheads…
My buddy was in front of me and reached the pool we had in mind first, and yelled that there were 4 or 5 GIANT CATFISH. I didn’t realize how big he meant until I caught up with him and looked where he was pointing. These absolute giants were congregated and slowly cruising around at the top of the hole, and we both started freaking out. I had broken my 9wt earlier in the week and was using my 8wt with a slightly sinking tip. I tied on an EP brush fiber & deer hair gamechanger fly I tied the night before. I cast to the closest fish and just hovered it in front of its face, with a few short and abrupt strips. I immediately froze for a moment as I saw its mouth open and engulf the fly. The fish kind of turned in confusion for a slight second and shot downstream as it realized it was hooked.
Fly angler Andy Howard cradling a river monster…
I held on to my rod and barreled downstream after it, tearing my legs up in the process. I knew this was the biggest catfish I’d ever hooked and my mind was just racing. The pools are closely connected and are very deep so I had to plan on where to step accordingly. This didn’t really work out as I fell many times just to keep up with this fish, but I didn’t care. It seriously felt like I had hooked into a truck, and I was the one being controlled. I get crap constantly from my buddy’s because I use straight 35-pound mono as my short leader (for toothy gar and bowfin) but I was glad I didn’t have anything less than it on. I truly did not think I was going to land this fish because for every inch I got on him, he took back two feet or more. At the bottom of the third or fourth massive pool, the catfish realized it couldn’t go any further downstream as the river started to shallow up, and decided it was heading back upstream. I obliged. After a fight close to 45 minutes, and when fish was finally growing tired I managed to guide it into one of the open rock crevice areas where I felt I could most safely unhook it and admire it.
To pursue these fish on the fly, think very large flies with lots of movement, fished deep in snaggy structure by day and in shallower areas adjacent to holding water at night. Gear would need to be of the salty type – a 9 – 11 weight fly rod, big reels spooled with lots of backing and depending on the depth fished, intermediate to sinking fly line and a heavy, 30 pound-plus, short leader.
It’s likely that guide Lance Dunham’s future fishing reports will include more flatheads being caught, but will the smallmouth bass make less of an appearance going forward? As a long-term fly angler of the Susquehanna and its smaller tributary rivers, I’m never disappointed when I run into channel catfish. While I’d hate to see the balance that exists now shift largely in favor of “the invader”, the thought of hooking up with one of these river monsters on the fly sings a siren’s song…
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