John Rotto Jr. is probably as close to a rock bass fishing expert as you’ll find in Pennsylvania.
Certainly he’s among the most successful.
The Apollo man caught the largest rock bass reported to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission in 2016. It was a 1-pound, 2-ounce, 12-inch specimen he pulled from Lake Erie on a shiner.
Two years before he did even better. In 2014 he caught two of the top five rock bass reported.
The kicker?
Even he admits he doesn’t usually fish for them specifically.
Rock bass are fun to catch on light tackle and will take a variety of live and artificial baits.
Photo: Doug Fischer/PF&BC
“I don’t have any secret techniques or anything. I just credit things to all the hours I put in,” Rotto said.
“Rock bass, what I’ve found, they’re a pretty reliable fish. If there are some around, they’ll bite. They’re not too picky.”
That’s the beauty of the species, though.
A panfish – Fish and Boat commission biologist Rick Lorson refers to them as “stream-bred bluegills” – they’re widespread, often abundant in the places they call home and eager biters.
As with bluegills, they hit the “nice” category starting at 7 inches or so. They’ll get bigger, though, with fish topping the 1-pound mark usually measuring a deep-bodied, sturdy 10 or longer.
They’re not as colorful as some other fish. Back in the day, they might have been described as “mottled,” said Bob Lorantas, warmwater unit leader for the Fish and Boat Commission. These days, he says they have a “digital camo” look to them.
Either way, their appearance is unique in one sense: they have a distinctive red eye. Lorantas said some even refer to them as ‘red-eye bass.”
No matter how you describe them, though, one thing’s true. They’re willing fighters.
That’s especially the case now. Angler catch data suggests August and September are among the top months for catches, Lorantas said.
“They’re sort of like catfish that way,” Lorson said. “Rock bass seem to remain more active through the dog days of summer.”
There’s no mystery regarding where to look for them either.
Smaller streams – think Loyalhanna, Laurel Hill, Bull, Ten Mile, Deer, Pine and Buffalo creeks – often contain the densest populations, Lorson said. But smaller rivers like the Yough and Kiski have them, too, as do even larger rivers and lakes.
Always, everywhere, they fill the same niche.
“Anywhere there’s a little bit of depth and some rocky substrate, there’s an opportunity for anglers to be successful,” Lorantas said.
That often means they’re near shore. Rotto has found that to be true.
“A lot of times, when I’m fishing for rock bass, I don’t even cast. I just let my bait float off the bottom right around the bank and get fish,” he said. “It can be especially good if the water is high. The fish move into the little nooks and crannies they couldn’t get to before.”
Small fathead minnows, measuring 2 inches or less, are his preferred bait. He fishes them on 10-pound line — just in case he hooks something like a bass or a catfish — below a bobber or alone, with just enough split shot to take everything to the bottom.
“I’m trying to get as deep as I can without snagging up,” Rotto said.
Rock bass also bite on nightcrawlers and red worms, fished alone or on a jighead, Lotrantas said. And they’ll take artificials.
Lorson frequently catches them on crawfish baits and small plugs when targeting smallmouth bass. That’s because the two species typically co-exist in flowing water much like largemouth bass and bluegills do in lakes.
“With rock bass and smallmouth bass, you’re kind of fishing in the same habitat and the same ways, so you have a chance to catch both,” Lorson said.
Whatever the bait, rock bass action can get hot.
“There are times when I’ll get one under a rock, and then I’ll get four or five more in the same spot. It definitely seems like they hang out together like that,” Rotto said.
“Now, there might be some small ones mixed in there. But that’s OK.”
There are no special regulations governing rock bass in most places. Pennsylvania, for example, treats them the same as any other panfish, allowing anglers to keep 50 a day.
They’ve proven capable of holding their own despite that, Lorantas said. .
“And they’re just fun,” he added. “They bite readily, they’re accessible from shore and they keep the attention of young anglers and old ones, like me. So that’s a recipe for success.”
Rotto enjoys them. He said they’ve saved more than one otherwise slow day on the water.
“And when you catch one that’s that next level up size-wise, you know right away,” he said. “You know you need to get some measurements.”
Rock bass records tough to beat
So you think catching rock bass is easy?
Maybe so.
But catching a really, really big one? Now that’s something else.
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission maintains a list of state records for 32 species of fish. The rock bass record dates back 46 years, to 1971.
Only two other records – for muskies (1924) and common carp (1962) – are older.
That rock bass record belongs to David Weber of Lake City for a 3-pound, 2-ounce fish caught from Elk Creek in Erie County.
No one’s come close to touching it, at least not recently.
The biggest rock bass reported to the commission in the last six years weighed 1 pound, 8 ounces, or less than half as much as Weber’s fish.
Interestingly, Weber’s fish is also bigger than the acknowledged world record.
The International Game Fish Association lists two rock bass as being tied for the all-time top spot. Both weighed 3 pounds even.
One was caught from the York River in Ontario in 1974 by a Peter Gulgin; the other was caught from the Pennsylvania portion of Lake Erie by Greensburg’s Herb Ratner Jr. in 1998.
If that seems odd – a state record being larger than the world record – it’s not necessarily unusual, said Jack Vitek, outreach and education manager for the Game Fish Association. He said it happens “from time to time,” usually for two reasons.
First, sometimes the state record holder was “not aware of the IGFA being the world record keeping body, and therefore never submitted the claim,” Vitek said
Second, he said, state records sometimes do not comply with IGFA standards. That’s because state agencies don’t always use the same criteria for angling rules and documentation.
