Bass Fishing at the Pack doesn't get any better than it was this past weekend on Saturday afternoon. In fact, I'm not sure if it's any better anywhere else in Pennsylvania. I'm sure it was safe to say that it was the BEST Fall day fishing I've ever had at the Pack on Saturday afternoon. I'm not talking numbers, I'm talking size...BIG Smallies and BIG Largemouth. I also said Saturday "afternoon" not Saturday "morning". If you fished Saturday morning you were met with clear skies, no wind and bright sun. The air temp was in the high 40s low 50s. The Pack is one of those body's of water that when it's a bluebird day, like Saturday morning, you're better off doing something else, anything, other than fishing. It's not that you can't catch a fish on a "bluebird" day at the Pack, it's just that you won't catch that many..zeroing-out is the norm.
I decided to launch the boat from the State Ramp at noon. I normally launch from Capri because the State Ramp is usually a cluster-F. I don't mind paying the extra $8 at Capri because sometimes I leave my car/trailer overnight. I would never leave my car/trailer overnight at the State Ramp. In fact, one of my friends trucks/boats was broken into one night while my friend was sleeping in the back of the truck. Do you believe that?
When I arrived at the ramp the weather was drastically different than the morning. It was VERY windy and cloudy. It warmed up a tad, mid to high 50s. The waves were a good 2 ft. high out on the Lake. I heard that we were expecting rain that afternoon. That was good, anything but bright skies and no wind. Because of the wind, I decided NOT to motor far and to take refuge behind any point/bank I could and start working the bank. Normally, the upper end of the Lake (dam end) is better fishing in the Fall..at least I think. I started running the bank with all the fast baits: spinnerbait, crankbait, jerkbait, etc. Any reaction lure I could throw. It was too windy, even out of the direct wind, to throw any plastics. I started throwing the spinner first. I think I caught my first fish in the first 5 minutes..except it wasn't a bass..it was a big ole Pickerel. I hooked up 5 minutes later with a nice size Yellow Perch. Again, no bass, so I switched up baits and started throwin' the crankbait. Within 10 minutes I hooked up with my first Smallie..a good size one that jumped and spit my bait out of his mouth. At least it was a Smallie. Not more than 1/2 hour later I started getting into em good. The next Smallie took my bait good and started going deep with it and reeling off line on my rod/reel. I thought it was a catfish because this fish did NOT want to come up. It wanted to go deep and stay deep. It was a BIG fish because even with the drag set correctly it was banging my rod against the boat. I thought the fish was going to break my line. In fact, I had to loosen the drag it was stripping line so fast. I only fish with 8 lb. floro on my rods at the Pack. I think the floro is more invisible underwater than most lines and allows my lures to run deeper. It's really not the smartest line to be throwing a crankbait on, because if you're working a crankbait correctly you should be crashing into everything..rocks, weeds, etc. and it doesn't take much to abrade or cut the line and take that 8 lb test down to 4 lb test. Anyway, I landed probably what was the biggest Smallie I ever caught at the Pack. It was a good 3-4 pounder. It was so big it could hardly get it's fat a$$ out of the water when I finally got it to the surface. It acted more like a largemouth. Not more than 10 minutes later, I caught a BIG largemouth.
In the next couple hours I caught 3 more BIG Smallies and missed another one...but I didn't care. I was having the best BIG fish day on the Pack than I ever had. I decided to take the boat out at 3:30 pm because the skies were getting darker and I felt a drop or two of rain. Plus, I didn't want to ruin the day getting caught out in a storm.
Fish ON! Rob
