Striped Bass vs. Small/Largemouth

[Yak Fish]

I've spent the last few days looking over the MD DNR site for the Susky Flats/River posts. People seem to regularly catch stripers and smallmouth/largemouth all the way up to the dam. Does anyone know how to specifically target one species of bass over another? I'm wondering if the habitat and feeding habits are the same.

If I were looking for smallmouth I would specifically target shallow weed beds, drop offs, docks and points. If I wanted to target stripers I'm not sure how I would differ. There are deep bridge pilings that I would likely jig for stripers, but other than that I'm not sure. For catch and release season I would try trolling, but I'm not sure this would be as effective later in the season or the fall.

Does anyone have any insight?

[mdmakaira410]

You are gonna get nailed by dnr if u plan on trolling anything past lapidum, just sayin...

[Yak Fish]

That's a good point. Above that launch is closed for striper fishing. I copied the excerpt from the DNR website. They don't really make it clear that it's a closed area. They make it sound like the regulations only apply to the areas below Lapidum.

"Susquehanna Flats, upstream of a line from Sandy Point to Turkey Point and the Susquehanna River downstream from a line connecting the Susquehanna State Park Boat Ramp in Lapidum to Twin Rocks to Tomes Wharf in Port Deposit; and Northeast River. No eels. All catch and release areas during the pre-spawn time period of March 1 through the third Friday in April prohibits the use of stinger hooks, requires barbless hooks to be used when trolling, requires the use of circle hooks or J hooks with a gap of less than ½" when using bait, and restricts boats to the use of no more than six lines when trolling, regardless of the number of indviduals on board the vessel"

[Yak Fish]

At any rate, I wasn't specifically talking C&R season. I am trying to understand how to catch them throughout the year...June 1st-Dec 15th for example.

[Memory Maker]

Ya want stripers ...... use pencil eels .......... smallmouth ...... crayfish ....... the Largemouth are generally south of Lapidum .........

Main thing is the place you fish ......... generally the small mouth and stripers don't mix. Generally when I caught SM, I didn't catch stripers and vice versa. If the water isn't running, look for pools with a water shoot/falls into it .......... the oxygen levels are low and the fish will be where they can breathe ......... you can catch some big fish there in the summer but the fights are short and revival takes a long time ...... really stresses the fish. WHen the water is running, we used to catch 100 small mouth and some stripers in a day using shiners ........ most of the small mouth were small but we would usually get at least 1 over 3 lbs/ day.

[fjarhead]

bass.

has anyone gone to peachbottom south of the 372 bridge, there is a island in the middle about a half mile south and has some great pools. A buddy and I spent about 4 hours one day exploring that island we "accidently walked up on two girls sunbathing ******in the nude*****" and there were several bass boats hitting the pools. It might be worth checking out.

[Memory Maker]

There use to be a ramp just above the Peach Bottom power plant. If you launch your Yak and anchor at the pool by the warm water discharge, you can catch ALL kinds of fish ........ we used to even catch hybrid Rock ....... and huge channel cats etc .......... may want to try to cast net some of the shad up there for bait ......... this place stays open all year ......... it's just getting to it when the rest is iced in .......

The small mouth fishing by the islands up to the Dam can be great but you have to learn the river .........