Schuylkill River Near Hamburg 8/20/10

[sholgate]

Fished from the dam down towards the stilling basin area.

Saw many, many YOY smallmouth in the shallows.

Caught 14 SMB all under 11". Talked to a spin and bait fella and he caught 3, but all under 11" too.

I never fished there before, but the water seemed like a very good environment for SMB. But neither saw nor caught anything of size. I rotated streamers, buggers, poppers, and large nymphs in most promising areas.

I think the river has great potential for what little I know about SMB. I would be curious to know how many legal sized (over 12") are harvested in the area, and river between Hamburg and Reading.

On a side note, I caught some nice sized (7-11" and gurthy) rock bass and red breasted sun fish. Not the targeted species, but I will confess, I still like catching them.

 

[Fishidiot]

Neat report. I'm not a Skuke regular but, based on the different reports I read here on PAFF, the quality of fishing varies a lot depending on where you're fishing on that river. I usually regard redbreast sunnies and rockies as signs of good water quality and usually as a harbinger of good bass fishing. I don't know what the regs are on that section of river but it may be that here has been mortality of bass 12+" due to angler harvest - it doesn't take long for some skilled fishermen to put a dent in a population of river bass (I kept a lot of bass when I was a kid so can't begrudge folks keeping bass today).

Good to hear about the YOY. I too have seen what seem to me to be unusually large numbers of YOY bass in the rivers and creeks I fish this year.

 

[RyanR]

That's just the average size of most river smallies. On most rivers, you'll catch far more in the 10-12" range than anything else. Also, smallies have a tendency at times to school up by size class. I have noticed that I've caught my biggest river smallies by using weight to make sure I was right on the bottom. A two streamer system really helps with the bigger fish.

 

[outsider]

The biggest smallmouth I ever caught came from the Schuylkill River. I'll just say it was caught between Reading and Hamburg. 21" long, and fat as a pig. I caught it on a slider/diver, right on the surface.