Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - July/August - 35

R.J. Graham battles a Largemouth Bass hooked on a flipping bait fished in Pymatuning Reservoir, Crawford County.

The ratio of Largemouth Bass to Smallmouth Bass
catches is about 85 percent to 15 percent. Graham's biggest
Largemouth Bass weighed 5-pounds, 3-ounces, and his
biggest Smallmouth Bass was just over 4 pounds.
During the summer months, Graham concentrates almost
exclusively on vegetation to catch Largemouth Bass. "During
the spring, Largemouth Bass hold on wood. But, once the
spawn is over and weedbeds are up, look to the green stuff
including milfoil, coontail and lily pad beds," said Graham.
Pymatuning Reservoir's Smallmouth Bass, on the
other hand, are usually associated with rocky or hard
bottom areas according to Graham. "During the summer,
I sometimes run into packs of Smallmouth Bass in water
less than 5 feet deep. The problem is these packs of shallow
Smallmouth Bass are constantly on the move-here now,
gone in 5 minutes," said Graham.
Graham's summertime presentations boil down to either
flipping a soft plastic "punch bait" with a ¾-ounce tungsten
weight into vegetation or cranking over points and humps.
The typical punch bait is a craw-like plastic but with
appendages designed to slip through tangles of vegetation
with minimal chance of wrapping weed strands.
"When fishing weeds, you do not just make a couple
pitches and move on. Instead, thoroughly cover every edge,
corner, indentation, open pocket, extra thick spot and
anything protruding-basically every inch of the vegetated
area," said Graham, who employs a 7-foot, 6-inch extra
heavy rod and 55-pound braided line for this presentation.
If coming up dry in weeds, Graham looks for
Largemouth Bass and Smallmouth Bass feeding on
shallow, rocky bottoms by casting a square-bill crankbait.
He relies on a 7-foot, medium heavy rod with 10-pound
fluorocarbon line.
When Graham explores new sites that offer a mix of
light weeds, wood and rock, he picks up a rod with either a
bladed chatter jig or a double-leaf willow spinnerbait.
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"The final bait I always have readily available for
Pymatuning Reservoir is the classic jig-n-craw for pitching to
wood and crawling along the bottom," said Graham.

Invasive species
PFBC Fisheries Biologist Concerned about Exotic
Species in Pymatuning Reservoir
Although expansion of vegetation in the last 30
years has likely contributed to the increase in size and
numbers of Pymatuning Reservoir's Largemouth Bass
population, recent unintentional introduction of nonnative weed species is not good news for the lake.
PFBC Fisheries Biologist Timothy Wilson is
concerned that if left untreated, invasive Hydrilla will
have severe negative impacts on virtually all fishing in
Pymatuning Reservoir.
"Dense Hydrilla appears to affect fish locations,"
said Wilson. "So far, our observations during
sampling around Hydrilla suggest that as habitat, it is
not used by Largemouth Bass (or any other predator)
nearly as much as Eurasian Watermilfoil and some of
the other vegetation. The denseness of the Hydrilla
appears to prevent Largemouth Bass from preying
effectively within it. When we electrofish through it,
we get bass off the outside edges but not from inside
beds, whereas in milfoil and some other aquatic
vegetation in the lake, the bass seem to get right in it,
and we capture bass all through the beds. The density
of milfoil, coontail, water lily and other weeds is such
that there is room for bass to maneuver within the
beds and prey effectively on the small fish using it,
but not in Hydrilla," said Wilson.

Pennsylvania Angler & Boater * July/August 2019

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Pennsylvania Angler & Boater - July/August

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