By Ken Maurer
The river has finally straightened out and settled down. The best walleye action has been after dark, but the big smallmouth will keep you busy during the daylight hours.
This is a great time to throw jerkbaits. I like a shorter rod, about 6 feet, with braided line and a flourocarbon leader. A jerk-jerk, pause retrieve will bring some hard strikes from both smallmouth and walleye. Experiment with length of pause until you find the sweet spot. If that doesn’t work, slowly drag a tube on the bottom or swim a twistertail just above the bottom. I like to use regular monofilament for jigging and tubing. It is less sensitive than braid, but the stretch allows for some “forgiveness” in the presentation. The big girls are on the hunt, fattening up for winter.
By the time this hits print, another archery season will be in the books. There were a couple of huge bucks taken in the Valley. The antler restrictions seem to be producing bigger racks, but I’m not sure it’s just about antler restrictions. There are other factors at work. With the lower deer numbers, a lot of hunting landowners have posted their land. You can’t blame them. If they want to have deer on their property, they can’t have droves of hunters marching through with two or three tags in their pocket. More posted land means more deer are going to survive to get the larger racks. A 2 1/2-year-old buck around here can have a 20-inch spread, and bucks that make it through another couple seasons look more like they came from Kansas than Pennsylvania.
Supposedly the larger bucks do most of the breeding, but I have seen areas where there are only a couple of “scrub” bucks left, and some question the merit of killing the larger bucks while allowing the inferior racks to survive.
Turkey hunters are having a good year. I have heard of quite a few fall turkey tags filled. Fall turkey hunting is a blast because there are a lot of turkeys in these hills. You do have to do some legwork to find them. A flock of turkeys scratching in the dry leaves makes a tremendous amount of noise. Enough so that you can often get close enough to bust them up. Just run at them, and fire a shot or two and they will usually go in all directions. Then settle in against a tree and start calling. Nothing fancy, just some pleading yelps and most of the time you will have action. Sometimes they fly back in, sometimes they sneak back quietly, but often they come in talking.
A turkey’s eyesight is superb. Often while archery deer hunting, I have had turkeys come by and most of the time, one of them will spot you. I have been waiting for a shot at a turkey with the bow for a long time. When a flock comes in, the chances are not good simply because there are too many eyes. If there are only one or two, you stand a better chance of getting to full draw.
I nearly got a shot off this past week. Two jakes came to about 30 yards, then one went over the top and the other continued toward me. He needed to take a couple more steps, but he drifted over the top and out of sight. If I don’t have any luck in the next day or two, I’ll trade in the bow for the shotgun next week, the dust needs blown out of the barrel anyway.
-- Ken Maurer, Herndon, is a licensed fishing guide and a regular contributor to the Outdoors section. E-mail at kenrose@tds.net
