ALLEGHENY R IVER BRONZEBACKS

Find the right habitat and water temperature for pre-spawn smallmouth

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A dense morning fog hugged the river, limiting visibility to within its banks. The lower Allegheny in Armstrong County was slightly high and stained when fishing guide and outdoors writer Jeff Knapp cut the power to his 18-foot jet boat and started drifting in the shallows within an easy cast of a low island.

“The water is 58-59 degrees, just under 60. This is when the smallmouths start showing up in the areas where they’ll eventually spawn,” he said on the water May 1. “The prespawn is one of the best times to have the potential to catch good numbers of big fish.”

Statewide on rivers and lakes April 15 through June 16, bass fishing is strictly catch-and-immediate release. But because they’re prolific spawners, there’s no prohibition against targeting bass during that period, except on the Susquehanna and Juniata rivers and their tributaries. Fishing ethics draws the line at pulling bass off spawning beds.

Before the first gravel bottom has been tailswept to make beds, the females begin to stage near the best nursery sites — plump with eggs and generally longer than the males, which arrive later.

“They like semi-protected areas, backwaters and spots that are protected by island complexes, incoming streams and other things that kind of deflect the main flow of current,” said Knapp, whose Keystone Connection guides service is based in Kittanning. “Part of my strategy in fishing is to go to areas where I expect there to be active feeding fish.”

He found them in 1 to 3 feet of water flowing over the stoney saddles between islands. After a long winter and nourishing some 2,000 to 20,000 unfertilized eggs, the famished females were aggressive predators.

“I think they’re feeding in or near areas where they’ll make beds in a week or two,” said Knapp. “That period will last three to four weeks typically. They’ll stay there unless the water gets high, which is possible, and then you’ll see them moving to shallower water.”

A fast boat will move anglers quickly among pre-spawn hotspots, but there’s no need to spend a fortune on smallmouth tackle. Knapp uses a 6 ½foot medium-fast-action spinning rod and a reel strung with 15- to 20pound braided line tipped with a 3- to 4-foot fluorocarbon leader.

“I like braided line,” he said. “When a bass hits, since there’s no stretch you can detect it pretty quickly. I don’t like to tie directly to a braided line, though. The monofilament leader gives it a little bit of a cushion, and though I don’t think smallmouth bass are particularly line shy, I just feel more comfortable having invisible line right at the hook.”

Knapp avoids swivels. On a 4-foot leader, a swivel too often taps the rod tip, he said, and braided line absorbs twist a little better than monofilament.

On this day, he was throwing 4-inch soft plastic flukes.

“Most fluke baits come with a slot in the head designed to have the eye of a 3/0 to 5/0 wide-gap worm hook riding up in there. That’s a very good setup for largemouths, but it’s usually not as good for smallmouths,” he said. “Nose hooking a fluke bait with a stiffer head once with a No. 1 octopus hook is a really good high- percentage hookup.”

Fished correctly, soft plastic flukes slowly waft toward the bottom. Weight, said Knapp, spoils the presentation.

“You’re fishing the drop. I think the biggest thing with the soft jerkbait — baits that get down in the water column and stay there for extended periods of time — is that pop and pause. The pause is when they’re most likely to strike,” he said. “It suggests a vulnerability and gives [the bass] the chance to intercept it. You don’t want the bait to be on the bottom. Putting added weight on there would actually be counterproductive.”

In four hours of fishing, seven bronzebacks were boated and released, and a few got off.

“We were targeting habitats where we expected them to be feeding. If we were fishing at a slower pace — floating down in a canoe or kayak or wade fishing — our approach might have been different because we wouldn’t have that mobility,” he said.

The Allegheny River rolls past many island complexes from East Brady all the way to Warren.

“We caught our fish in fairly defined areas today. We fished other areas that weren’t productive, but if the river drops 6 inches to a foot and warms up a couple degrees, they will be.”