Conneaut Lake offers solid fishing spot
Northwest Pennsylvania’s Conneaut Lake is a unique body of water, at least for Pennsylvania. It’s the only sizeable natural lake in the western part of the state. It’s brimming with structure and cover. It supports and outstanding population of both largemouth and smallmouth bass. And it can be oh so tough.
Come fall, though, its bass often loosen their lips a bit. Recently, I spoke with my friend Chad Templin about fall fishing on Conneaut.
Templin, a Meadville-based attorney, fishes Conneaut several times a week until ice up. I asked Templin how he consistently catches bass during the early fall, a time when the fish are on the move in a changing environment.
“You have to be mobile and flexible,” he explained. “The worst thing about fall in Pennsylvania is the unpredictable weather. You have to accept that a few extreme days of cold weather or cold rain is going to move the fish. Unlike spring, where you can usually predict a window of several weeks where you generally know where fish will be, things can go south in a hurry in the fall. As a result, a person needs to be prepared to adjust to changing weather and water temps. Now that zebra mussels have dramatically increased the water clarity, don’t be afraid to look as deep as the thermocline allows.”
Much like nearby Keystone Lake, Conneaut has populations of both largemouth and smallmouth bass. It also has differing types of cover, which includes weedgrowth both shallow and deep, as well as rocky points and humps that are barren of weeks.
I next asked Templin if he believes the two species use totally different areas of the lake.
“I have always thought it was a bit of a myth to say that largemouth relate to weeds and smallmouth relate to rock, since I have caught many big smallmouths in and along the weeds,” he noted. “However, one time of the year when I do lend more credence to this theory is the fall. Generally, as the weeds start to die, the lack of cover in those areas tends to push the largemouth to the lone surviving weeds while the smallmouth tend to move to more shallow rocky areas. In the fall, these areas are the warmest locations in the lake, will be holding the most food and I target different shallows for each species.”
I’ve fished with Templin several times, both on both lakes and rivers. He’s quite adept at working crankbaits. So it’s no surprise that crankbaits are a significant part of his fall arsenal on Conneaut.
“My favorite bait in the early fall is a square bill crankbait,” he said. “By design it seems to deflect through weeds better, is more buoyant and draws strikes from active shallow fish. Once it has become clear that the early fall, shallow water bite has slowed, I spend the rest of the fall targeting primary transition spots. Using my iPilot feature on my trolling motor I will sit on each area and wait to catch the fish moving in and out, up and down with deep diving crankbaits, swimbaits and jigs. I realize this ‘camping’ method may not be exciting, but almost every trophy size fish I have caught in the fall has been achieved by siting on the highway between shallow and deep and waiting for them to come to me.”
By mid to late October Templin has to adjust to the next major change in the lake, one brought on by the continually cooling water temperatures.
“The last point I would mention is fall turnover,” he concluded. “On deep natural lakes like Conneaut there will be a definite thermocline that shows up on the sonar in mid-summer and it can usually be used to your advantage, to rule out massive areas of the lake that do not hold fish.
In the early fall, one can continue to use this to their advantage by narrowing their fishing between the shallows and the thermocline.
But once the lake turns over, essentially the whole lake becomes fair game and it certainly signals the end of the traditional early fall season.”
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle
