Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - July/August 2013 - 27

photo-Carl Haensel

Smallmouth bass

PFBC website: www.fishandboat.com

Pennsylvania Angler & Boater • July/August 2013

photo-courtesy of Robert Rosencrans

Most often, Baumgardner casts to the riverbank and
occasionally to the edge of weed beds, which have never been
more abundant. “There were plant beds last year that I’d never
seen before. A big part of it has to be that the water is getting
cleaner,” said Baumgardner.
As testament to its transformation over the past 40 years,
the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural
Resources (DCNR) and the Pennsylvania Organization for
Watersheds and Rivers (POWR) named the Monongahela
River the 2013 River of the Year. Once besieged by pollution
from steel mills and coke plants, it has now made its way along
the road to recovery.
Considered the third best of the three rivers a decade ago,
PFBC surveys show that it now is on par with the free-flowing
reach of the upper Allegheny River for smallmouth bass. It
produced the highest number of bass, primarily smallmouth
bass, of all three rivers during the 2005 Bassmaster Classic
and the 2009 Forrest L. Woods (FLW) Cups.
Navigational locks and dams regulate the Monongahela
and lower Allegheny rivers, and the water within a mile downstream of the dams usually offers the most productive fishing.
In its free-flowing middle section, the Allegheny River
becomes an entirely different waterway, but one that provides
some of the best bass fishing in western Pennsylvania,
according to PFBC’s Three Rivers biologist Bob Ventorini.
Pools near Franklin, Oil City, Tionesta and Warren are
known hot spots for bass and are close to public launches.
“We get so many large, football-shaped smallmouth bass
in our October walleye survey at Oil City that we net them
just for fun,” said Ventorini. “In terms of numbers of big
smallmouth bass, Oil City is one of the best, if not the best,
location on the entire Allegheny River.”
“A muskellunge survey in the same pool in the spring
of 2012 yielded the highest catch rate ever recorded on the
Allegheny River for bass larger than 15 inches,” said Ventorini.
“We got 20 fish that size per hour.”

No bass fishery in the state has been as historically
productive as the Susquehanna River, although in recent
years, the water around Harrisburg has suffered impacts of
suburban sprawl and agricultural production.
The PFBC is working hard to have the river declared
impaired, a designation that the Pennsylvania Department
of Environmental Protection has resisted so far but one that
would generate federal funding to mitigate pollution. Until
that happens, anglers will see fewer juvenile bass.
Water quality is better on the North Branch of the
Susquehanna River, which flows through the city of
Wilkes-Barre, and has come a long way from its industrial past. Although colder and less fertile than the lower
reaches of the Susquehanna River, the North Branch has
an abundance of crayfish, shiners, and hellgrammites and
a series of riffles and 50-feet deep pools that bring healthy
numbers of smallmouth bass.
Tournament angler Robert
Rosencrans would rather fish
here than anywhere else in
Pennsylvania. “It’s close to home,
literally 10 minutes from my house,
and I can catch and release 100 fish
a day,” said Rosencrans. “Hands
down, I think it’s the best smallmouth bass fishery in the state.”
In March, members of
Rosencrans’s club, the Suskie
Bassmasters, were pulling 3- and
4-pound bass out of the river. “In
the fall, the bass will be 5 pounds.
As a whole, the numbers and
Robert Rosencrans
sizes couldn’t be better.”
In addition, access couldn’t be easier now that the club has
renovated the Nesbitt launch across from the Luzerne County
Courthouse with funding provided through a PFBC grant.
As city fishing goes, none is more urban than on the
Delaware and Schuylkill rivers in Philadelphia. Although
increasingly noted for American shad and striped bass in
spring, these waterways are worth targeting for smallmouth
bass and largemouth bass from early summer through fall.
On the Delaware River from the PennsylvaniaDelaware border to the Calhoun Street Bridge, just
north of Philadelphia, catch rates by tournament anglers
equal the statewide average with the backwater areas
especially productive.
The largemouth bass fishery is typically below the head
of tide at Trenton Falls on the Delaware River and below
Fairmont Dam on the Schuylkill River. Within these
stretches, anglers can find several boat launches or places
to fish from shore.
And, there’s plenty of structure in the tidal water for
locating bass including river banks and island shallows with
vegetation, old dock pilings, long-abandoned wooden dock
cribbing and rock piles.
For anglers willing to study these structural elements and
the tides, the fishing can pay off.

http://www.fishandboat.com

Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - July/August 2013

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