Cold Water, No Bites
Late Winter for Blue Marsh Bass

This was a whim. Late winter bass fishing. The air was 48 degrees and the water 45 on this early March, 2011, morning. I was set-up under a bridge under Pennsylvania Route 183 on Blue Marsh Dam, an Army Corps of Engineers project completed on the Tulpehocken Creek in the late 1970s. The water level at the dam was drawn down to its winter level, so you could see lot of exposed structure. I made some mental notes for when I would return in the spring, but for now I was set up under this bridge by design because the forecast was for heavy rain. Not the ideal conditions perhaps, but I had the time and the bridge as my canopy so . . .

You've heard bass don't wake up until the temp hits 50 and that's probably true for the most part. It was this morning. Casting night crawlers on the top and bottom under this bridge resulted in no bites, no nibbles, no nothing. So I patiently set up a rod with the night crawler on a Texas rig, and baited up my other rod with some store-bought catfish blood bait and tossed it into the middle of a cove. Set that one up and just sat down and waited.

I might as well have been waiting for Godot, who, like the fish, didn't show up. The rain came hard and went away, then came back hard, repeating that pattern over and over. So I was glad for my bridge roof, but sad for the nibble-less-ness of the water the rain was falling into.

After three hours, it was time for lunch, and I concluded that my meal would not involve any fresh bass and made the slow climb back to my car parked above on the bridge on Route 183.

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