New to fishing on lakes

[newbiewannabe]

Hello, I have fished rivers alot and ponds I enjoy fishing the river alot it's nice simple  and  a backpack  shorts and a nice day it'd perfect ! But my dad recently bought a pontoon and loves fishing (we don't catch much) I am trying to find lure and baits to  help us a bit. Are local lake is difficult  to fish it's deep and quite vast cownesque lake Lawrenceville  pa it has a broad band of species including large mouth what's some lures and baits to try out . 

[WRB]

Welcome Bass Resource is a bass fishing venue, are you interest in multiple species or mostly bass?

Any boat offers the opportunity to fish nearly anywhere but isn’t typically considered a bass boat.

I suggest using trolling technique to locate bass/other fish species. Diving lures are very effective when trolled at a slow walking speed at depth a few feet near the bottom.

The 1st tool bass anglers look for is a sonar unit to determine how deep the water is and how deep any fish maybe. Sonar unit range from Under $100 to over a $1,000’s. For the pontoon boat trolling you only need to determine depth.

Tom

[Fishing_Rod]

Greetings,

Welcome to the forum. Enjoy all those special moments together.

 

I have found that by keeping to smaller baits and fishing them at a gradual pace, slow for many, that tends to increase the catching. I generally keep things relatively simple using soft plastics on small jig heads like you would for crappie, panfish, and bass. Fish of all sizes respond well to those. Since you are fishing from a platform on the water all you basically need to do is get the bait in the water and work it about 15 feet or less. Enjoy the time together and have a good time angling. Be well and cheers!

[MediumMouthBass]

@newbiewannabe are you talking about Cowanesque Lake? Near the PA/NY border with Hammond Lake and Tioga reservoir within a few miles?

[scaleface]

All lures work . Bass like to hang around stuff . So find some cover and choose lures that will fish it effectively . Texas rigs work well most places . Its hard to beat a ned or other small jig around rip rap dams. I fish a slot limit lakes often and can almost always manage a limit of bass for the table, under the slot fishing the dam with neds .  The Google Earth picture of your lake shows a huge rip rap dam.

 

[Jar11591]

Baits may not differ from river or pond fishing as much as location. When fishing a lake that I’m unfamiliar with, the first thing I do is pull up a contour map of the lake. I look for any points, some are obvious and some are only identifiable as points because the underwater structure shown on the contour map. That’s always my starting point for lake fishing. Points, points, and points, and I adjust from there. That’s not to say I only fish points, but that is simply how I start to break down a new lake. 

[RRocket]

As others have pointed out, fish structure. 

 

If you don't know the topography of the lake, fish around visible structure.....particularly boat docks of which I'm sure there are many.

[Darth-Baiter]

can you schooch a pontoon boat up against cover?  I ask because I dont know.

[newbiewannabe]

Thanks to everyone and also yes by Hammond  ! I have a fish finder so definitely will be hooking that up and also trying some new tactics!  

On 7/23/2023 at 9:41 PM, MediumMouthBass said:

@newbiewannabe are you talking about Cowanesque Lake? Near the PA/NY border with Hammond Lake and Tioga reservoir within a few miles?

Yep ! Any tips 

[MediumMouthBass]

@newbiewannabe thats a really nice area out there and with alot of options to fish, i was fishing that area a month or 2 ago and spent over 6 hours on Hammond for that trip. Out of 4 of us on 2 different boats we caught mainly crappie and walleye on bass lures, but out of the whole day only 1 bass was caught (and it was very good sized). All of those 3 are extremely high pressured and can make it a challenge. Hammond and Cowanesque have the RV/Camping parks so the day we were there if i had to guess id say around 500 people were camping at that lake. Most of them had fishing gear and boats/kayaks.

Now with that said they are really good lakes, just have to know where the fish are that are willing to bite.

What i would recommend is that you spend a few weeks with the fish finder just cruising whatever lake you prefer and map as much of it as you can, then go back to the areas that were holding bait balls or some type of structure. But while doing this i highly suggest you troll some lures behind the boat. You can catch walleye, bass, or those amazing hybrid striped/striped bass (Cow has Stripers/Ham has hybrids). Mark the area you caught any trolling if you do.

Hammond was the best crappie lake in PA a few years ago, not sure if it still is or not, but we mainly caught crappies and they were not that big or meaty, (the size of them made me think maybe they were stunted from how many are in there). So not sure if all those crappie being in that lake would do something to the bass population.

Before the trip i did alot of research on all 3 and decided on Hammond just because after getting off the lake i thought we would go to the Tioga Res Spillway and fish from the bank, but it was too late for that day.

Theres plenty of videos on the Tioga spillway and the Cowanesque one as well, the spillways are probably the best options for catching fish in all 3 of those bodies of water. Huge catfish, smallmouth, walleye, hybrids/stripers, and maybe some musky if you are at Cow.