Rock Bass at night

[Mike]

Just a quick note that in recent years as I have practiced night fishing with large wet flies I have learned how willing Rock Bass are to hit at night and in the wee morning hours. I knew this to be true for crappies from other types of fishing, but not Rock Bass. A fish on nearly every cast is not an exaggeration where there is a good population or concentration of these fish. Fallfish are willing at night as well.

 

[Dave_W]

I used to get a lot of rockies back in my night fishing days too.

I was often using very large top-water lures for bass and muskies and it wasn't unusual to get a big rock bass from time to time. Curiously, I got rockies on surface stuff much less during the day but they seemed to be much more aggressive and looking up at night and willing to hit lures as large as they were.

Thinking of night time rock bass... there's a video on the Biologists Reports involving a walleye survey on the lower Susky vicinity of the T-pike bridge that you're probably familiar with. While watching this I was surprised to see many rock bass getting measured on the board.

I wonder if these fish were on the move at night? (And good to see some rockies in the Susky).

 

[Mike]

Capturing (Catch per hour data) and measuring Rock Bass and Redbreast Sunfish has been standard Boat electrofishing protocol during the SMB surveys for a good number of years. It may have become part of the protocol after anglers reported declines in the Susquehanna, but I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t being done earlier than that. Certainly it was being done during general warmwater fisheries surveys in rivers, but those surveys were often infrequent in a given river.

 

[JerryC]

I've caught then in the dark with the fly rod. I don't do that much night fishing. My buddies and I rent a house, usually twice a year, on Fairview Lake in the Poconos. The rock bass were aggressive during the day and for a while after sunset. They just hammered the top water poppers and bugs I was tossing. A lot were in the 8 to 10 inch range. They were very tasty when breaded and fried in peanut oil.
The biggest ones I've seen have been further north. My nephew caught one in Vermont. It might have been his first fish on a fly rod that measured 12 inches. I've caught several big ones in a Northern Ontario lake using night crawlers or leeches on a jig. When you started catching rock bass as it was getting dark, it was a signal to head back to the lodge.

 

[Baron]

JerryC wrote:
I've caught then in the dark with the fly rod. I don't do that much night fishing. My buddies and I rent a house, usually twice a year, on Fairview Lake in the Poconos. The rock bass were aggressive during the day and for a while after sunset. They just hammered the top water poppers and bugs I was tossing. A lot were in the 8 to 10 inch range. They were very tasty when breaded and fried in peanut oil.
The biggest ones I've seen have been further north. My nephew caught one in Vermont. It might have been his first fish on a fly rod that measured 12 inches. I've caught several big ones in a Northern Ontario lake using night crawlers or leeches on a jig. When you started catching rock bass as it was getting dark, it was a signal to head back to the lodge.

Does Fairview remain weed free given its depth? And is there too much boat traffic to enjoy fishing in summer.

 

[JerryC]

Some of the shallow areas have weed beds and lily pads that come to the surface, but we usually go up in late May and mid-September, so I don't know how it is in mid-summer. After Memorial Day, the boat traffic gets heavy with water skiers and Ski-Doos. The area where the PFBC ramp is, as far as I know is in a no wake area, in fact that whole end of the lake is no-wake zone.