Largemouth Bass Berks Fishing: Big Bass Crusing Shallows At Antietam Lake

My Berks fishing luck for largemouth bass on July 10, 2014, at Antietam Lake, actually started in the morning Blue Marsh Lake.  I was bait fishing there, looking to throw my cast net for alewife and gizzard shad from the shore at Blue Marsh, which is located below Bernville, PA.  I was at the Dry Brooks boat launch, within site of the lake’s dam breast.   You can use a small cast net for those baitfish at Blue Marsh, provided you have a cast net license for that impoundment.  Check out the PA Fish and Game Commission website for more detail.

I was able to catch a few baitfish that I would need for an upcoming night fishing expedition at Blue Marsh and had some nightcrawlers along with me.   I was shore fishing along the area where the boat launch is.  I did not have any luck with the crawlers on the top or bottom, but another angler happened by, fishing a tube lure.  He said he had landed a 12-incher out of the rocks near the docks with the tube.

Not much was happening for me, however, at Dry Brooks.  So, I motored down to the Stilling Basin, just one entrance down Pallisades Drive toward Rebers Bridge.    First cast with a crawler on a float right at the spillway, and I hooked a carp, but the barb had not been set and after a short run it was off.

A fellow angler on the other side of the spillway said he’d been there since 7:30 with little luck and it was now noon.  Just then, he hooked into a carp (the same one, perhaps) and after a nice fight was able to land it.  Looked to be in excess of 20 inches.  Not sure what his bait was, but it was a natural.

I did notice that the water coming out of the spillway was seemingly 15 degrees colder than the water above the dam.

After a while, it was time for lunch, so I headed for home and then to Antietam Lake, a much much smaller reservoir than Blue Marsh.   I wanted to see if there were any holdover trout.

Not sure about the trout, but I observed many large blue gill and some monster largemouth bass cruising the shore, looking about the 3 to 5 pound range.  The only bait I had were mealworms (for the missing trout), so I caught a tiny blue gill on a mealworm and then quickly returned it the water, now as bait.

The bass went nuts and I caught two largemouth shorts and had one of the big ones with the blue gill in its mouth but could not hook it.  I fished that baby blue gill to death before it gave up the ghost.   Subsequent attempts to catch a blue gill small enough to drive the bass into a lather proved unsuccessful.

If I were you, I’d minnow trap some baby gills and fish ‘em along the shore in an out of the shadows for largemouth bass late afternoon at Antietam.