Favorite Fishing Destinations Countdown: No. 6 - Lake Pymatuning, Pennsylvania

It's hard for me to not get excited about Lake Pymatuning as I write this because I'll be visiting there in a little more than a week, staying in a lakeside cabin in Pymatuning State Park and splitting fishing time between Pymatuning and a couple of other Western Pennsylvania lakes. Lake Pymatuning might be the most user-friendly major lake I've ever fished, and it a fabulous destination for family outings. It's fairly large, covering more than 17,000 acres, but it fishes small in the sense that good fishing is widespread and you don't need specialized knowledge or a fancy boat to tap into great fishing for multiple species. 

In truth, you don't need a boat at all. Multiple tracts of Pymatuning State Park offer extensive shoreline access to much of the lake, plus multiple piers, and the lake's shallow margins lend themselves to good wade-fishing in several areas. Seasonally (some winters, anyway), Pymatuning is also an excellent walk-on ice-fishing lake.

From a boating perspective, motors of more than 20 horsepower may not be operated on Pymatuning, so there's no threat of big boat wakes from pleasure boaters. Most boaters are fishermen or paddlers enjoying the lake, so Pymatuning is great to fish from a canoe, kayak or johnboat. I'm actually bringing my kayak along on my upcoming trip and am looking forward to putting it to work on Pymatuning.

Adding to its user friendly nature, Pymatuning is a fabulous multi-species lake, and because it has a lot good shallow cover and structure around it's edges, those fish tend to be in predictable places. Crappie (both black and white), walleyes and bass are the headline species, but Pymatuning also offers great opportunities for catching catfish and a host of panfish species. A couple of years ago, I spent a fun spring day on the lake with my good friend Darl Black, and we went out with a real multi-species mindset. If memory serves me correctly, we caught 10 species that day.

Beyond offering great fishing access, the state park lends itself nicely to overnight stays, with nice cabins at a reasonable cost and plenty of campsites in two different campgrounds.

Area information: Visit Crawford

Park Information: Pymatuning State Park

Fishy Start to Spring

Spring officially got underway last week, and I'm delighted to have gotten to start the season with four days of fishing (and catching!) I spent the first three days of the season on Arkansas' Lake Ouachita, fishing mostly a bass and a bit for crappie to take photos for work. I then strayed farther west, to a small lake in the Oklahoma portion of the Ouachita National Forest, to do a bit of bass fishing from my kayak for videos.

It was definitely a spring bite on Ouachita. The largemouths were shallow and in a pre-spawn mode, and spinnerbaits produced the best action. We mostly caught males, so the bigger females were most likely staged nearby. We also got some good spotted bass atop rocky points and sunken islands that were close to deeper water by dragging Carolina rigs and by swimming a Flash Mob Jr..

The best crappie action occurred in less than 3 feet and around buckbrush. We caught them by suspending curly tail grubs a couple of feet beneath Thill floats, casting close to the buckbrush and twitching rod tip just enough to rock the float and make the jig dance. They were hitting the jigs hard, more like what I'd expect from a bass, ripping the float out of sight in an instant. Big fun!

I only managed a few bass at the little lake, which was pretty busy on the first Friday of spring and with beautiful weather leading into the weekend. However, two of three were way up the lake's most significant creek arm, on a very shallow flat, and hit a Rebel Bluegill, which is a shallow crankbait that looks like you would expect it to based on the name.

Sharing Santee Cooper Country

My first Santee Cooper Country adventure was nearly three decades ago with a college buddy, and I remember well my first Santee fish, a bass I caught from near the boat ramp at Santee State Park. That's another story for another time, but it was the start of a major fishing chapter, and one that thankfully continues to be written!

I wouldn't try to guess the number of days I've spent on Lake Marion and Moultrie, which together make up the 170,000-acre Santee Cooper system, but it has been a bunch. I've fished from swampy upper end of Lake Marion to the deep water near the spillway at Lake Moultrie and have spent days catching slab crappie from brushpiles, wrestling flatheads out of submerged timber, drifting for heavyweight blues, pulling bass from cypress knees, slip bobber fishing for giant bluegills and shellcrackers, chasing striper schools and more.

I've also gotten to share Santee Cooper's wonders with my son, Nathaniel (now 19) and a few other friends, and this week I get to do likewise with my 13-year-old son, Asher. We leave dark and early tomorrow for Black's Camp, which is the basecamp where I have spent the most time at Santee Cooper over the years and is one of my favorite destinations anywhere because of the fishing, the food, the fish camp atmosphere and especially the people.

The event officially starts tomorrow at dinnertime, but Asher and I will leave way early so we can have part of the day free to explore fabulous backwater areas in kayaks before kickoff. On Wednesday and Thursday we'll fish with guides, and both weather and the recent bite will dictate species targeted and approaches. I attended the same event a couple of years ago, and schooling stripers and blue catfish served up fabulous action. On Friday morning, we'll venture out in the kayaks one more time before starting toward home.

Of course, between time on the water, we'll enjoy great meals with many fishing industry friends and simply enjoy getting to spend time in Santee Cooper Country.

Indiana Ice Fun

I met Doug Sikora at a writer event at Lake Chickamauga last summer. He was there on behalf of Bobby Garland Crappie Baits. I was there to get photos and story material. While together, we got to talking about fishing -- as fishermen tend to do -- and realized we had a common fondness for ice-fishing.

"You should come up and fish with me this winter," Doug said.

I agreed that I should.

A lot of conversations like that happen in boats, but despite good intentions on both sides most don't ever amount to anything. Doug remembered that conversation, though, and when the bite got good he called his contact at Bobby Garland to see about connecting with me.

That was a week ago yesterday. Today, Doug, a friend of his and I spent the day on Doug's home lake in Indiana and probably caught a triple-digit tally of fish, including about 30 keeper crappie. Best I can recall, we caught seven species. The first white crappie I caught this morning was both my first ever fish from Indiana and my first white crappie for 2015. Before the day was over, I also added white bass and yellow bass to my 2015 list, bringing the year tally to an even dozen.

Probably my single favorite quality a fishing trip can have is someone sharing a kind of fishing they really love -- especially on home waters. That described today. Doug is passionate about ice-fishing, and his favorite approach is to travel light and walk as far as is needed to get to the best spots and then drill a lot of holes. He is a tournament crappie fisherman, but he fishes for and catches everything that swims, and he especially enjoys the multi-species approach. Today's plan matched his favorite kind of plan, and the fish chose to cooperate. My kind of combination.

I appreciate Doug following up on that summer conversation, and I'm guessing today was the first of many outings together. I also appreciate friends at Bobby Garland connecting the dots!

Meet You Halfway Crappie

As much as I like playing the coaxing game and trying to figure out what combination of lifts and twitches will make a fish bite, I like it even better when they are super aggressive, like they were this morning. The crappie did get fussier as the day wore on, but for the first couple of hours, if there were fish on the graph when I began lowering my bait, chances were good that at least one would start coming up before the lure got very far down, and if I just stopped it halfway down, they fish would come all the way up and attack it. It was that simple. No waiting. No coaxing. No rejection. They'd just come up and grab the bait, which is just plain fun.

I had said yesterday that we would be walleye fishing today. Plans shifted a bit, and the walleye day is now tomorrow, but Plan B, which was orchestrated by Jeff Sundin, worked out far better than most people's A plans. I really don't have any idea how many fish we caught -- most of which were released like the one in the clip above. I actually wish I'd kept a rough tally of my own fish, just to know. I only know we caught a bunch. I caught almost all my fish on a Watsit Grub body rigged on Lindy Bug or Toad jighead.

Pan-Tastic Ice Season Start

Spent a mighty fun day today catching bluegills and crappie with Jeff Sundin and Jon Thelen of Lindy Fishing. We caught a lot of fish, and while the temperature was pretty low (mid teens, I think), the breeze was only slight and it was plenty comfortable fishing on the open ice. It also snowed just enough last night and today that the ice had some snow on it for traction, which is good because I forgot my cleats at home. Mighty good start for an ice season, I'd say.

I used a Lindy Fat Boys jig all afternoon and caught a nice mix of both species. The fish were in fairly deep water, but the most active ones were at least a few feet off the bottom. Through mid-afternoon, the bite got really steady, and the crappie especially were charging hard when they decided to eat. Just before dark, we had to work a little harder to persuade fish to bite.

Walleyes tomorrow and Thursday.

Dale Hollow Smallmouths, Tailwater Trout & Rend Lake Crappie

When I have to dig into the slide files for a
picture, like this one of Stephen Headrick of
at Dale Hollow,I know it's been a while since
I've been somewhere!

I've spent some days on the legendary waters of Dale Hollow, but given the fact that my photos from there are all slides, I'd say it has been way too long. I'll fix that very soon. On Sunday evening I'm driving to Dale Hollow Marina to spend a couple of days with friends from Punisher Lures. I'm looking forward to returning to one of the most beautiful lakes I've ever fished and hopefully the getting the opportunity to lock horns with some jumbo smallmouths.

After I leave Dale Hollow, my plans for a couple of days remain a little up in the air, but I'm certain I'll be fishing, and it will probably be in Tennessee. Most likely plan for at least part of the time is to explore the tailwaters of Dale Hollow and Center Hill. Both rivers are very close to where I'll already be, and in recent years the latter has developed into one of the South's finest trout fisheries.

Final stop of my next round of travels will be in Southern Illinois, at Rend Lake, where crappie will be the main attraction. Best I can recall, I've never caught a fish in Illinois, so assuming some success, I can add that to my state list. I also haven't caught a white crappie yet in 2014, so maybe I can add at least one species to this year's list. With two months remaining, my current species tally stands at 26.

Uncertain internet and computer time sometimes makes blogging a challenge, but I'll do my best to keep updates and notes about cool stuff I learn posted here, on my facebook page and on Instagram and Twitter, so keep a look out! If you haven't followed me in any of those places, I'd appreciate you checking out what I share and maybe adding a follow or page like!

Today is one of those "get ready" days. Clearing memory cards, charging batteries, gathering clothes and fishing junk, taking care of things at home... Suppose I'd better get to doing stuff!

Northbound Plane

Jeff Sundin with a pretty northern Minnesota bluegill

Come Monday, I'm once again airport bound to travel well to the north for a few days of ice play. I'm looking forward to spending time with Jeff Sundin in northern Minnesota, where the outlook for lows around zero and highs approaching 20 would be an absolute heat wave, were it to hold true.

It has been cold there. Seriously cold. However, walleyes and panfish alike have bit well from the reports I have read. The combination of major slush problems through the first half of the season and brutal cold through most of the winter has kept fishing pressure comparatively light this year, and seemingly that has been good for the bite.

I'm not sure yet what we'll be targeting. Walleyes? Crappie? 'Gills? Whatever it is, I'll be ready. I've already bought my license, which begins the very hour I'm scheduled to land, so if it turns out to be practical to hit the ice for a while on Monday afternoon, I'll be ready to go.

Watch here, on my facebook fishing page and on my Twitter feed for pictures and reports.

Bass-Style Slab Crappie Fun

TJ Stallings with a Rollin' Runner slab.

I thought I was casting for bass when I picked up my baitcaster and made a long cast with a 4-inch swimbait on a Road Runner Rollin' Runner head and began swimming it slowly along the bottom. After all, the same combo produced great bass results yesterday at Noxubee Lodge. Even after I caught my first crappie, an easy 2-pound fish, I figured that was the oddball in the group. Nope. Not even close. In fact, TJ Stallings and I put a bunch of crappie in the box, and only one was small, and all except a couple of the fish hit our big swimbait rigs. In case you've ever wondered, catching 2-pound-plus crappie on bass tackle is really, really fun!

We also managed to land a handful of bass, including one really good one. I caught one largemouth that we estimated to weigh 7 pounds. It's funny, though, because even that big a bass was absolutely trumped by the jumbo crappie, their hard fights and the gear we were using to catch them.

Erie Ice Fest, Day 2

We couldn't have asked for better weather today. The wind that had been in the forecast didn't materialize, but the air temperature was cold enough that our ice didn't deteriorate. Given no wind, we returned to Presque Isle Bay -- same area as yesterday -- for another round of catching crappie, perch, bluegills and pumpkinseeds. The crappie still didn't go on a rampage like they did for Dave Lefebre just a couple of days ago, but over the course of the day, we caught quite a few, and much like yesterday, we caught a gazillion of the other species. Dave also caught one largemouth and smelt.

Only one day remaining, and we're currently debating where to fish. More likely than not, we'll head back to the same area in hopes that a slab-fest breaks out. Works for me. It's a fun place to fish. Of course if we fish somewhere else, I'll bet I'd have fun there too. We might even do both, starting the day back on Presque Isle and then spending the afternoon fishing somewhere else.

One way or the other, I'd better sleep a while.

Pro Tips to Help You Catch More Crappie

Want to catch more crappie? These practical tips from crappie pros Doug Cherry and Mark Williams will help you detect more strikes and put more fish in the boat. More fishing pro video tips HERE.

Thursday Tips: Find the Thermocline

B.A.SS. Elite Series pro Brian Snowden
with a late-summer largemouth from Table Rock.

By late summer, many lakes and reservoirs around the country have stratified. Oversimplified (to accommodate my own very limited understanding), a cooler layer forms on the bottom, with a warmer layer on top. In-between is a narrow middle ground known as the thermocline, and that layer generally offers the greatest interest to fishermen.

The bottom layer tends to get too low in dissolved oxygen for many sportfish and baitfish. while the top layer commonly gets to warm. Fish move in an out of any of the layers, but they spend the most time in the middle, where both dissolved oxygen levels and temperatures are moderated. Although not exactly a "best of both worlds," the middle layer does offer the "least bad of both worlds" through the hottest days of summer. Even fish that are tolerant of warm water spend quite a bit of time near the thermocline because it holds big concentrations of food.

In lakes that stratify, finding the thermocline with electronics typically isn't difficult. The most obvious clue is that much of the bait and many larger fish will concentrate in the same depth range. Beyond that clue, though, the layers themselves each have a little bit different appearance on most graphs, and the thermocline often is easy to recognize.

If you know what depth range is likely to hold the most fish, you only have to figure out where they are within that zone. That part depends largely on the target species. Stripers, walleyes, trout other species that roam open water often will be suspended over much deeper water and roaming quite a bit, so the key to finding them often is to locate schools of baitfish. Look for seagulls resting or circling in an area. Usually baitfish are nearby.

Cover-oriented species like bass and crappie often will relate to cover or structure at the depth of the thermocline, so if you figure out that zone is 20 to 22 feet, start looking at points, humps and channel edges that offer good structure within depth range. If you can find stumps, boulders or a brushpile atop structure in the key depth range, that's even better.

Whether you locate specific fish to target or search as you go by trolling or drifting, set your lines so that your baits stay at the thermocline or slightly above it. Most fish are more likely to move up than down to fish.

Finally, continue to watch our electronics for more clues as you fish, and take note of every detail any time a fish bites.

Thursday Tips: Match Hookset to Situations

"You must be a bass fisherman."

I've heard the same comment many times after someone set a hook too hard. Usually it has come from a guide who mostly targets trout, crappie or walleyes, and occasionally the words have been directed at me. I wouldn't characterize myself as a "bass fisherman," although I certainly do enjoy fishing for bass. I'm an everything-that-swims fisherman. More likely than not, on trips when I've gotten overzealous with my hooksets, I'd just finished trips where I'd been pitching soft-plastic lures for largemouths or maybe fishing for big catfish with J hooks.

Without question, the hookset is a critical part of most kinds of fishing, and figuring out the best timing and type of motion for a given situation will help you catch more fish most days. The "given situation" part is the key, and it's also the tough part. The best hookset varies enormously based on the species you're after, the size of the bait, the type of line, the size and diameter of the hooks you are using and the way fish are taking baits, among other things.

With so many variables, there's no magic answer. A big soft-plastic offering rigged weedless for largemouths calls for a bit of pause to let the fish fully get the bait in its mouth followed by a hard, hookset with the rod moved a long distance. At the opposite end of the spectrum, when a trout takes a micro jig that has a tiny hook, the hookset must be immediate and should be nothing more than a snap of the rod. A walleye taking live bait, meanwhile, sometimes requires a long delay -- as in several seconds -- followed by a slow sweep.

Consider the variables and how the fish are taking the bait and to be intentional about how you set the hook. Experiment and pay attention to what works, both for you and for others who are fishing near you.

Of course, at times the toughest hookset to get right is the one you're not supposed to make. Circle hooks usually get pulled out of fish's mouths if you set the hook, but they do a great job of hooking fish if you simply tighten the line and let them turn into place. When a catfish rattles a rod in it's holder or a bass smashes a soft-plastic lure, NOT setting the hook can be mighty tough to do, but if you want to catch the fish you have to learn the right response for the situation at hand.

Ugly Tour Pretty Cool

Pros and guides? Nope. Classic destinations? Sometimes. Big catches? The fish will get to decide that part, but the first couple of go-rounds have produced an 8-pound largemouth and a whole bunch of crappie.

To spread word about the new Ugly Stik GX2, the folks at Ugly Stik have launched the Ugly Tour, which is sending a single Ugly Stik rod, a 6-6, medium heavy spinning rod, all over the country to fish for everything that swims, with each trip documented with an Ugly Tour webisode. Fishing could be by boat, bank or pier and in fresh or salt water, and the folks doing the fishing are Ugly Stik users who have applied by telling about the waters they fish and a favorite Ugly Stik memory. You can watch learn about the tour, watch existing webisodes and even apply to be added to the tour on the Ugly Tour website.

The tour highlights everything anglers across the country love about Ugly Stiks because it takes seriously tough equipment to send the same rod all over the place and put it in so many hands. It also shows the rod's diversity because the tour will include trips for a huge variety of fish species in all different settings. The webisodes, which are only a few minutes long, highlight the stories of the anglers themselves and the waters those anglers most like to fish. Each also depicts a real day on the water, no matter what the fish decide to do.

In addition to the Ugly Tour website, you can keep up with the tour through various social media outlets: facebook, uglystikfishing; Twitter or Instagram, @uglystik; YouTube, uglystikTV.

I know I'll be following the tour, so when I see an especially cool episode I'll try to remember to mention it. For now, check out episodes 1 and 2 and see what you think. Ugly Tour.

Bluegill Bite the Main Attraction

The fact that Nathaniel and I scored a double to get things started during yesterday's pond outing wasn't so unusual. The odd part was the fact that he caught the bluegill and I caught the bass. Usually, I'm the one who reaches first for the ultralight while he has trouble putting down his bass rod. In truth, I caught my bass on my ultralight, but it our double seemed backward, and Nathaniel really had set down his bass rod and picked up his ultralight.

Nathaniel's bluegill set the tone for our short afternoon outing. His "little pole" was rigged with a tiny Lindy Watsit Grub, and from the time he caught that bream, I'm not sure he put it down, because virtually every time he cast it to the pond's edge, he got hit, and often he would end up hooked up with a good-sized bluegill. In fact it wasn't long before I found myself digging in the box for a Watsit of my own so I could get on the action too. I caught a couple of 'gills on my starter, but he probably caught 10 in the same amount of time.

I also managed to pull a couple of crappie off the pond's spillway structure after I switched to a Watsit; however, the bluegills absolutely were the main attraction. Weather and time dependent, we might slip back out to the same pond this afternoon, and if we do, I'll be you can guess how we'll both be rigged to start the outing!

10,000 Views

I noticed yesterday that the YouTube channel Nathaniel established last fall had passed 10,000 views, and I can only hope the bulk of those folks thought their two or three minutes were well invested. It doesn't seem like long ago that I was happy to hit 1,000 views, so maybe much larger marks are not that far away?!

The channel consists of short fishing videos, most of which are instructional in nature. Many use by pro anglers, guides or other industry folks. A few are just us. We use an all-species approach, and have covered everything from ice-fishing to casting for inshore saltwater fish.

Although it's still pretty early, with the channel being less than a year old and only including about 30 videos, early response clearly suggest a big interest in crappie fishing videos. We've posted four crappie how-to videos, and they are four of the five that top the "views" list.

If you haven't checked our or channel or haven't visited in a while, I hope you'll swing by to take a look. For a sample, just click on the video below.

Thursday Tips: Start Small with Bait

"Let's start with small pieces of herring and see if we can get a good bite going," said Kevin Davis of Blacks Camp. "Then, if they start biting well, we'll go a little bigger to see if that gets us a bigger fish."

A multi-species fishing guide and co-owner of Blacks Camp on the Santee Cooper lakes, Davis commonly applies a "start small" strategy whether he's casting lures for bass, dragging cut bait for cats or dangling minnows for crappie. There are exceptions. Occasionally when Davis knows the fish he's targeting are eating big stuff, or he's specifically targeting colossal cats or extra big bass, he'll begin big. Usually, though, Davis finds that he gets more early action by erring on the small size of the bait range for whatever he is doing, and that helps him to locate fish and figure out patterning details that help him present the bigger baits more effectively later in the day and increase his changes of finding big fish for his clients.

Of course, at times he stays small. If there has been a mussel die-off, for example, and the blue cats are all eating little pieces of meat from dying mollusks, it's hard to get even he biggest cat to bite a big piece of cut bait. And while Davis will occasionally drop a big minnow or even a live herring for crappie, he has caught far more serious slabs on small minnows than on bigger baitfish.

Lots of variables come into play, but the short answer from Kevin Davis is that when you're talking about bait, bigger isn't always better.

Thursday Tips: Pause Your Presentations

The first warm days that foreshadow spring (which will be mixed in this month if you live far enough South) will push game fish such as bass and crappie shallow to feed and you can catch them on flats and around shoreline cover. It's important to remember, though, that the air warms far faster than the water, and a cold-blooded bass and it's cold-blooded forage remain winter slowed even on the warmest, sunniest days. That means the fish usually won't chase meals very far. It also means that a fast-moving lure won't look natural.

Suspending jerkbaits stand out this time of year because you can make them dance and dart erratically and then leave them hanging enticingly in the strike zone. The pause is absolutely critical to such a presentation early in the year, and sometimes finding the right length of pause is the key to catching fish. As a general rule, pause as a long as think is long enough and then pause that long again.

Pauses aren't only for jerkbaits and bass, though. Slow falling lures like a 1/16-ounce Road Runner Pro Marabou work well when the water is cold because you can move the lure with twitches and mix in pauses, with the bait falling slowly through the water column and looking helpless.  Pauses are also central to fishing a "float and fly" for bass, crappie or trout. The float allows a tiny hair jig to hang motionless in the water column between series of jiggles, and most fish take the bait during the pause.

Pausing is tough because you feel like you aren't doing anything and because it limits your capacity to cover water in search of fish. However, at times it's a real key to drawing strikes from fish and definitely yields big rewards.

Cold-Hands Crappie

Charlie and Kevin Rogers, a father/son crappie pro team, drove through heavy snow near their home in Missouri to spend a few afternoon hours battling giant winds followed by a morning that began with the thermometer reading 16 degtees. The bite was slow from the very hard front that crashed through, but they still managed to wrangle out a handful of fish, and they were exactly the sort of fish I needed for photo and stories.  Despite serious cold, it was a great morning of learning and story gatherings for me, and I'm grateful to Charlie and Kevin Rogers for making the drive down and for helping me get such good stuff done.

Oklahoma Fish Medley

Gary Dollahon enjoys catching any kind of fish that wants to bite, including Lake Fork largemouths like this one, but this week's quest will center on home waters in Oklahoma.

Gary Dollahon has been telling me about one of his favorite seasonal bites for a few years now, and we've finally made plans for me to travel his way and try it for myself. Gary I both enjoy catching whatever wants to latch onto the other end of a line, and that's a major part of the appeal of the brand of winter fishing that he and I will be doing. We'll be jigging for fish that pod up together when the water gets cool, and the fish that tug on the other end could range from white bass to colossal blue catfish. Fishing is still fishing, so you never know for sure, but Gary anticipates fast action from a pretty good mix of species.

Beyond being big fun, catching a variety of fish gives me a great opportunity to gather photos, videos and material for magazine stories -- and to put some Lew's rods and reels to the test! The plan also includes time chasing crappie with Bobby Garland pro Kevin Rogers, which will most likely involve some different angling approaches.

I fly to Tulsa tomorrow and will be fishing Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. As always, I'll do my best to deliver fresh reports from where I'm fishing and to convey some of what I learn, so keep an eye on my blog. I also like to add notes and photos to Twitter when I travel and invite you to follow (@jeffsamsel).