Largemouth bass. File photo

We’d only been on the lake a few minutes when my partner Dave Keith did one of his classic sweeping hookset.

The medium power spinning rod bent into a deep curve. A couple minutes later, he grabbed a healthy two pound largemouth by the lower lip and swung it aboard.

Following that initial action, I launched a tandem spinnerbait past a clump of brush protruding from the surface. As the lure bumped into the woody cover, a bass of similar sized intercepted it.

The setting was Tamarack Lake, a 500-plus acre body of water located in Crawford County, not far from Meadville. During the next six hours the shallow, fertile body of water provided outstanding action. My count clicker registered 71 when we pulled the boat out of the water around mid-afternoon.

I suspect it’s been at least 15 years since I’d been on Tamarack Lake, a trip focusing on muskies as had all my prior visits. For a significant amount of recent history, no one had been fishing Tamarack as it had been drained and sat empty for several years. Like so many smaller reservoirs, the dewatering was necessitated by safety concerns of the dam structures.

Following a lengthy process of acquiring funding and the required permitting, the two dams that form Tamarack were repaired. The lake began filling back up in 2019. Subsequent stockings by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission have included fathead minnows, golden shiners, largemouth bass, bluegills, walleyes, muskies, white crappies, yellow perch, and spottail shiners.

As noted earlier, Tamarack is formed by two dams, one at its northern end and one at the southern extremity. It’s a shallow lake, 12 to 13 feet at its deepest, with most of it much shallower. The deepest water I saw in the southern portion of the lake was around nine feet. Water clarity if quite stained, not muddy, but rather rich in fertility. Wood cover is extensive, including brushy cover that sprung up while the lake bed was empty for several years and is now flooded. Many of the bass we caught were near this visible cover. Lilly pads and other floating weeds are common in the near-shore areas along with numerous beaver lodges.

Currently, Tamarack is under catch-and-release regulations, a level of protection commonly applied to lakes that have been refilled. I’d guess that most of the bass we caught last week were from stockings in 2019 or ’20, healthy fish in the 14- to 16- inch range. A friend who lives near the lake and fishes it often verified a few bass in the four-and-half pound range.

Tamarack is owned by the Fish and Boat Commission and is limited to electric motors and non-powered boats. Several access areas are sprinkled along the western shore of the lake, one that lays in a north/south orientation. There is also an access at the northeastern corner of the lake.

During our recent trip, we caught bass on a variety of presentations, including sinking Senko-style worms, spinnerbaits, flippin jigs, and swim jigs. On that day, the most productive one was the worm. Though we caught fish on lots of colors, the bass seemed to show a particular fondness for five-inch worms that combined green pumpkin and chartreuse.

Unweighted worms caught fish, but more bites occurred when adding a 1/16 ounce bullet weight the rigging the worm weedless in the classic Texas rigging style.

Despite the “weedless” rigging, we still experienced some snags. If you happen to visit the lake, expect to lose some tackle.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle