Urban waterways often overlooked
Perhaps not the most aesthetically pleasing of angling venues, river sections that flow through urban areas feature often overlooked bass fishing opportunities. They can shine the brightest as the pages of the calendar thin.
Tournament angler Deron Eck has experienced success on a variety of waters, including an impressive victory last summer at FLW's American Fishing Series Lake Erie event.
But he's a river rat at heart, having cut his angling teeth on the tough-to-fish industrial rivers of Western Pennsylvania.
Once the leaves turn, Eck expects to make contact with quality-sized largemouths on the Monongahela River — fish that frequently do a disappearing act in midsummer, as evidenced by recent BASS and FLW championships in Pittsburgh.
One of Eck's more consistent patterns is targeting coal barges tied along shoreline pilings.
“A group of barges provides a huge umbrella that attracts bass, just like a big lily pad field,” he explained. “The best barges are empty ones. They don't sit nearly as low in the water as loaded barges.”
Eck finds that river largemouths will suspend along the edge of a barge. While it might be sitting in more than 20 feet of water, the bass are 3 to 4 feet down.
During the early fall, his first choice is a popper-style topwater. As the water cools and bass become less willing to take a surface bait, he'll go with something that gets a bit deeper.
“Often, they'll hit a shallow-running crankbait, like 100 series Bandit,” he said. “You need to get the boat right up close to the barge and make accurate casts that put the bait parallel to it.
“Good casting is important, as you'll bang up crankbaits if you bounce them off those tough, old barges,” he added.
In addition to topwaters and shallow cranks, Eck has found a beaver-style soft plastic bait productive when allowed to filter down slowly through the top 5 feet of the water column.
When a network of barges is moored end to end, he'll often pick up bass by skipping a beaver back in the void where the rounded bow of one barge butts up against the rounded stern of the next.
On the lower Allegheny River, where smallmouths far outnumber their big-mouthed cousins, Eck eagerly anticipates wet fall weather, which typically pushes the river's biggest bronzebacks into current breaks formed along vertical concrete structures, such as bridge piers.
“There are a variety of current breaks along a typical pier,” he said. “But the most consistently productive spot is the front of the pier, where a current vortex is created.”
Eck likes two bait styles for fishing vertical columns during higher, dirty water: big, thumping spinnerbaits and wide-wobbling crankbaits — both of which call up bass when the water is dirty and visibility is low.
Thanks to higher flows and colder water, bass often will be tucked right up against the bank, making them more accessible to anglers.
Under this condition it pays to place casts within inches of the bank.
Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.
