In a region where yinzers get “jumbo” for “sammitches” at the “Jon Egle” n’at, it’s no surprise that one of the best gamefish suffers from an identity crisis.
Stripers, or striped bass, are big broad-bodied game fish from the true bass family. They hit voraciously and can bend a rod like a deep-sea trophy.
Here’s how to tell if you caught one: Holding the fish in two hands, look around your location. If you’re in western Pennsylvania, you didn’t.
When Venture Outdoors scheduled a “striper” trip to Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park, Butler County, they got everything right but the name of the outing. “Fly Fishing: Lake Arthur Stripers,” led by veteran anglers who know the difference, searched for and found hybrid striped bass.
“People talk about the striper spawning run at Lake Arthur, but that isn’t really accurate. They’re the hybrids,” said trip leader Ian Brown. “I’ve seen them trying to spawn but for the most part they can’t -- they’re sterile. They’re within casting range of the shore in the spring because the aelwives are there, hanging near drop-offs at the edge of deeper water.”
The striper-white bass-hybrid distinctions are noteworthy for several reasons, not the least of which is that fishing shop owners on the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers know their counties provide the state’s only access to sea-going stripers. A native, anadromous game fish that lives in saltwater but travels to freshwater to spawn, striped bass commonly reach 15 to 20 pounds.
Merchants around Raystown Lake in Huntingdon County want anglers from the state’s western frontier to visit one of the few places in the Keystone State where powerful landlocked stripers can be caught. The Pennsylvania state records for marine and landlocked striped bass are each greater than 50 pounds.
White bass are native to the Great Lakes and Mississippi River drainage. They’re schooling fish -- catch one and you’re on many. In rivers white bass run up clear rocky creeks to spawn from April to June. Find them now at the mouth of an Ohio River tributary near you. A 2-pounder is considered big.
The state Fish and Boat Commission wishes anglers understood and appreciated the extra effort that goes into maintaining fisheries of hybrid striped bass. A hatchery-created cross between a striped bass and a white bass, the hybrids tolerate warmer water, and grow larger than white bass and faster than stripers. Fish and Boat purchases hybrids from out-of-state hatcheries, stocking them as fingerlings at Lake Arthur, Shenango River Lake on the Pennsylvania-Ohio border and the Pittsburgh Pool at the juncture of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers.
During last week’s fly fishing trip, Brown and Venture Outdoors participants waded to submerged road beds, sand flats and pebbly bottoms near drop offs during the hours around dusk.
“It’s those edges, clearly delineated drop-offs,” he said. “The rest of the year [hybrids] school up like vacuum cleaners just sucking up everything, and [anglers] catch them out in the lake at night. But normally starting about the second week of April, they cruise below the shallow edges off shore looking for victims.”
Generally, hybrid shore action picks up when the water temperature reaches the upper 50s, Brown said. Lake Arthur’s surface now registers in the 60s, but the big groups of aelwives are forming only now. Brown suspects it might have something to do with this year’s odd rainy spring.
A self-described smallmouth fly guy, Brown chases hybrid striped bass when the smallmouths are spawning. He uses a 7- or 8-weight rod with a fighting butt, capable of throwing a large fly and wrangling big fish, and 12 to 15 feet of heavy 0x leader.
“They’re not leader shy. If I get into fish over 22-23 inches, they put on quite a lot of weight. I need that lifting power,” he said.
For hybrids, Brown likes big but not necessarily heavy streamers -- No. 4 and larger Clauser suspenders and variations on deceiver and mullet patterns tied on heavy-wire bass hooks. Grey, white and chartreuse provide the right contrast, he said, and he avoids weighted flies.
“It’s a long cast beyond the drop-off and strip retrieve, long cast and strip retrieve. If nothing happens I change the cadence,” said Brown. “If a decent-size hybrid comes up and refuses [the fly], it leaves an obvious boil. I’ll go to a short strip and make it look panicky.”
Living in Pittsburgh’s North Hills, Brown said the hybrid striped bass are just 30 to 40 minutes away.
“It’s wonderful to go fly fishing for 20-inch-plus fish close enough to home that I can just go out for an evening,” he said.
First Published: May 11, 2018, 8:26 p.m.
