All Three Rivers around city limits are excellent for smallmouth bass and sauger. you can crush smallmouth with a simple carolina rig and a rubber worm. All along the shorlines. I catch anywhere between 50-100 smallies everytime i go out. June Bug color works best for me.
 
i quote the bluelagoon, are you available for guiding, i cant catch a fish around the three rivers,live near washington landing, always have to travel to Presque isle to catch anything, was about to organize a trip up there monday when i read the smallies
are gone from the bay! help!

J-Mac

 

Pretty sure someone mentioned South Side so just a quick report - Fished South Side 18th St. park area today, it was dead. Buddy got one decent spotted bass early. I lost a tiny smallie.
 
In my last 6 trips there over 2 years it's been dead - save for losing one big smallie. Not exactly hitting it at peak seasons but man. I don't plan on going back anytime soon. Still a homeless guy living in the park there - always seems to be one or two random guys back there, still kind of surprised us.
 
Hate being stuck on shore, especially on the rivers.

I really haven't fished the Pgh rivers in about 20 years, but when I used to join the wading crowd just below the Highland Park Dam (Sonny's Landing) especially during the spring spawn from about April 1 thru about May 7.   We'd catch our share of smallies, carp, rock bass, walleyes, saugers, saugeyes and what we seemed to catch most of during a 2-3 week period of that spawn were the white or hybrid bass.    The guys who would keep any for eatin would often take the white bass, though technically I think they had to be 14" long and you were only allowed 2, but I don't think that 14" requirement was very well observed.   Surprised nobody is mentioning the white bass here.  We used to use simple Mr Twister style jigs & plastic worms.    Silver, motor oil color, chartreuse and red all would catch fish.  Beetle Spins also worked well.   Sorry, I see MisterZ did mention the White Bass.  Glad to see they're still around.
 
You never knew what was gonna come over that dam.   I saw a dead cow come over there once.

go about 90 miles north on the Allegheny River, great fishing.

Porktown
He has been doing a good job of being my favorite starter, this is icing on the cake.  (Per the J-Mac posts...)  BTW - I doubt that largemouth is from the rivers.

Hard to imagine that LM is from the river within the city, it's pretty nice. He's got even more fish pics on twitter. Some trout looking things and cat looking types, a few decent bass. It's pretty cool to see: https://twitter.com/#!/JamesZ53/media/grid