Central Pennsylvania Fishing

This may be old news to some of you but it appears that the smallmouth bass in central PA have started their fall feeding binge. Just over an hour of fishing today and I landed 5 and lost 1 on a very small stream in central Pennsylvania. The smallest fish was 13 inches and largest was 15 inches. I know these aren’t big numbers but given the stream, it probably a decent indicator of how good the fishing could be right now. The thing that struck me most was that these bass were some serious “chunks”. A far cry from the hot weather skinny fish I’d been catching in the stream during our warm weather streak this summer.

Time of day10:00 a.m to 11:30 a.m.

Pattern

Recent rains had the stream up to a very nice level for fishing. The water has definitely cooled which seems to have sparked the smallmouth to go into fall feeding mode. I fished three separate holes in the stream. All the smallmouth came from the head of the pools in shallow water of about 2 feet. The fish were feeding very heavily and aggressive.

A coupe of weeks ago I fished farther north on Kettle Creek and found the bass to be feeding very heavily as well. I had a hunch that the fall bite was just around the corner!

Baits

4″ Yum Dinger in green pumpkin/chart rues was all I threw today. Baits were fished without weight on a 2/0 gamakatsu bent shank worm hook.

Water Conditions

The water has definitely cooled off in comparison to whats its been recently in the central region. The water levels were at idea levels for fishing. Water clarity was 6+ feet.

Weather conditions

Fog in early morning. Partly Cloudy. Air temps around 75 degrees.

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