Pickerel

[SteveG]

Does anyone mind sharing some locations that hold pickerel? I know they're not held in high regard by many, but I'd love to try for them on the fly. I'm in Mechanicsburg, and wouldn't mind driving an hour or so.

 

[jifigz]

Poe Lake, Black Moshannon Lake, Colyer Lake (just refilled, so give it some time,) Lake Perez, and theb lots and lots of places in the Poconos and the Jersey Pine Barrens. The lakes I listed at first are all close to my part of the state and not too far from Mechanicsburg. I think pickerel are great fun on a fly rod. It is like hunting for larger Esox species yet you can use a 4 weight. Good times.

 

[HopBack]

PFBC link for chain pickerel here.

 

[SteveG]

Has the population finally returned in Poe Lake? I fished it years ago for them, but it took a turn for the worse for a number of years.

 

[sandfly]

most lakes and rivers here hold good populations of pickerel.

 

[Fredrick]

Scotts run

 

[klingy]

I've caught them in laurel lake before. Pretty close to m'burg. Have also caught them in Pinchot, but not as many as laurel.

 

[SteveG]

Thanks, I'll have to give Laurel a try. Roughly, whereabouts are you talking Sandfly?

 

[Swattie87]

I've caught them in Mountain Creek, which feeds Laurel Lake. I remember a fairly nice one in the 15" range there once. Stream wise they can be common in infertile acidic type streams. Mountain largely fits this mold.

I've seen some small, low gradient Brookie streams that are loaded with lots of little Chain Pickerel. Not the type you'd like to catch, and they can be pretty annoying as they're all about 7 or 8 inches long it seems and beat the Trout to your fly or lure. They can become locally very abundant in these types of streams...but it's boom or bust. Either they're not there, or there's tons of little ones. A common theme with these for me seems to be that they're feeder streams of reservoirs.

They're in WW creeks to some degree too. I've caught them in Swatara Creek, reasonably far upstream in Lebanon County though.

 

[RLeep2]

I wonder if your "little Chain Pickerel" might actually be Redfins rather than Chain Pickerel. Where I grew up in NW Pa., the Redfin's Ohio River drainage counterpart, the grass pickerel was pretty much everywhere that didn't have a stair-step gradient. Both are runty fish, a 10-incher is a good one.

http://www.nanfa.org/fif/eamericanus.shtml

 

[Swattie87]

RL - They were definitely little Chains, no question.

Redfins are cool, I've never caught one though.

 

[sandfly]

tioga river, Chemung river, pine creek, Hamilton lake, Hammond lake, tioga lake, crooked creek, hills creek lake

 

[SteveG]

Swattie I was thinking that too with Mountain Creek. I've seen the same with Big Poe Creek, above and below the lake. While some may have been grass pickerel, it wasn't uncommon to creep up on a logjam and see a decent chain lurking there.

Sandfly, I wish I found myself up your way at some point. My work tends to limit how far I can travel during the nicer weather.

 

[Swattie87]

I'm pretty sure Grass Pickerel are limited to the western part of PA...Ohio watershed.

What you saw in Poe were probably also little Chains.

 

[salvelinus]

When I used to fish Dauphin County's Stony Creek I caught small pickerel on occasion. I always thought they were grass pickerel. Looked like a pencil with teeth.

 

[SteveG]

I went to Laurel today to poke around, but didn't have cash on hand to rent a paddle boat or yak, nor did I eel like driving to an ATM that late in the day. There isn't any room to fish from the banks there. The 9 tiger musky I saw the other day while checking out new water have given me esox fever.

 

[streamerguy]

RLeep2 wrote:
I wonder if your "little Chain Pickerel" might actually be Redfins rather than Chain Pickerel. Where I grew up in NW Pa., the Redfin's Ohio River drainage counterpart, the grass pickerel was pretty much everywhere that didn't have a stair-step gradient. Both are runty fish, a 10-incher is a good one.

http://www.nanfa.org/fif/eamericanus.shtml

Grass pickerel have really grabbed my attention lately. So far I have only found one location with fishable numbers in the French drainage, but there's gotta be more out there that have more than just the occasional oddball fish. Just gotta do some more exploring.

Very neat esox member with a vicious attitude just like their bigger relatives. Pretty spooky from my experiences though..

 

[RLeep2]

If you want to specifically target them, I'd look at creeks that, for lack of a better way to put it, look like better largemouth habitat than smallmouth habitat. It would be difficult to specifically suggest places in the French Creek watershed because so much of the access to a lot of the tribs is iffy. But, just for starters and outside of the drainage, I'll bet that the Little Shenango above Greenville and Oil Creek above Titusville have a lot of them. Both have a lot of the right sort of habitat.

Here's a map, for what it is worth: http://www.orser.psu.edu/pagap/Species_Maps/Fish/GrassPickerel.jpg

 

[sandfly]

I have caught a lot of chain and redfin in bucks county

 

[streamerguy]

RLeep2 wrote:
If you want to specifically target them, I'd look at creeks that, for lack of a better way to put it, look like better largemouth habitat than smallmouth habitat. It would be difficult to specifically suggest places in the French Creek watershed because so much of the access to a lot of the tribs is iffy. But, just for starters and outside of the drainage, I'll bet that the Little Shenango above Greenville and Oil Creek above Titusville have a lot of them. Both have a lot of the right sort of habitat.

Good stuff. Yep that's the type of water I've been looking at on the maps, and various swampy areas around the natural lakes. Access is definitely tricky at a lot of those places.