Adventure & Outdoor Recreation on Lake Wallenpaupack

Lake Wallenpaupack is one of the few places in Pennsylvania where you can fish for landlocked striped bass. The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission lists smallmouth and largemouth bass, walleye, pickerel, yellow perch, trout, striped bass, channel catfish and panfish as the lake's popular sportfish, and it keeps stocking the water rather than relying on natural reproduction alone: striped bass fingerlings are maintenance-stocked, hybrid striped bass stocking was discontinued in 2022 to protect the wild Atlantic coastal striped bass population, and the lake doubles as a brood-stock source for the PFBC's hatchery walleye program, with fingerlings and spawned adults returned to it each year. Trout are stocked as fingerlings for a put-and-grow fishery because the lake is too large to stock with adult fish. [PA Fish & Boat Commission lake page and Area 5 biologist report, 2026-09-07]

Know the limits before you keep anything. Under Commonwealth Inland Waters regulations, striped bass and striped bass/white bass hybrids are open year-round with a 20-inch minimum and a daily limit of 2 combined; walleye and saugeye run a 15-inch minimum with a 6 fish daily limit and a closed season from March 15 to the first Saturday in May; largemouth and smallmouth bass have a 15-inch minimum, a 4 fish combined daily limit, and harvest seasons of January 1 to the day before the second Saturday in April and October 1 through December 31. A Pennsylvania fishing license is required at 16 and older — 2026 pricing is $27.97 resident annual, $60.97 non-resident annual, and $31.97 for a 3-day tourist license. [58 Pa. Code 61.1 and PFBC 2026 license pricing, 2026-09-07]

Two accessible fishing piers serve the lake: one at the PFBC's Mangan Cove access off SR 590, the lake's only free public launch, and one at Brookfield's Ironwood Point boat launch. Fall anglers should plan around the dam drawdown, which starts after Labor Day and stepped the 2026 tentative surface target from roughly 1,180.5 feet the week of September 8 to about 1,174 feet by the week of October 4, with submerged hazards possible. Ice fishing is expressly permitted under Brookfield's public lake use policy in accordance with PFBC regulations, but cars and trucks are not allowed on the ice. [Brookfield Renewable Wallenpaupack public lake use policy and 2026 drawdown schedule, 2026-09-07]