But it was worth it…  The river has been out of control for the last week. I’ve had to cancel a few trips due to high and very dirty water, this should be prime time on the river right now. The river has been dropping since Friday but it is still 8 feet above normal. The ramp in Rocky Hill is usable and we figured the water clarity should be improving by now so Mike and I decided to do a little scouting for this weeks charters. 

  It never stopped raining for the 2 hours we were out but the Frabill Stormsuits kept us bone dry. We tried a couple of different areas. The first spot was 8-10 feet deep over an area that usually holds some herring. They were there… So were the bass. I started off throwing a Live Target Blue Back Herring and hooked up with just a few casts of shutting the motor down. Nice start…

From there we moved out a little deeper and tried some soft plastics on jig heads. Pat Renna of T-Man Custom Tackle gave me a few prototypes of a new soft plastic he is working on. They looked great and I was anxious to try them out. I put one on a 1/2oz head and began bouncing bottome in 12 feet of water. It didn’t long at all to get thumped hard.  As I was fighting mine, Mike hooked up with a 7″ Limetruese Slug-Go on a jig head as well. Both were nice fat keepers. 

I also managed one more decent fish on a Bass Harasser. This was back in 10 feet of water and I was just bouncing the lure along the bottom when the bass nearly ripped the rod out of my hands. We were back at the ramp around 5:30, not a bad two hours. It makes me feel a lot better about tomorrow’s charter!

One of my regular fishing partners returned from college this week… Just in time. Josh and I launched in the dark with a light drizzle and empty lot this morning. There was only one other boat there, very surprising for a Sunday morning. We had fish on our first 5 drifts but it quickly died around 6. We had hits on Revo Shads, Slug-Gos, Stick Shadds and Houdini’s. There was a good amout of bait around dimpling the surface but I have yet to see any blitzes on top. I dropped my biggest fish of the year after a vicious hit and a brief thrashing on the surface but at least I got to see it. I’ll get her tomorrow….

I fished with Eric Cormier this morning. He wanted to learn the stretch of water in the Rocky Hill area. I look forward to fishing this area all year long. It’s no nice launching in the dark. It’s quiet and every bird around is singing. We heard turkeys, owls, eagles and lots of ducks. There was just a bit of fog, not enough to slow us down but it made for a nice sunrise on the river.

It’s been the same thing every morning with the stripers… They are there but not in big numbers and they are not real aggressive. We see multiple fish on every drift and then it dies by 7 or so. Once things slowed, we went out a bit deeper and threw 6″ Salt Shakers on 1/2oz jigs in 20 feet of water. Still slow but we put a few more in the boat before pulling the plug around 9. T-Man Super Swimmers got the big fish of the day again…

This morning I had Frank and Bill from Frabill on board. Fishing was OK. It was nice to have a morning where the wind wasn’t howling. We fished the usual places and found a few The action wasn’t hot and heavy but enough to keep everyone happy. T-Man Super Swimmers caught the majority of our fish today.

On our way to another spot, we came across a hen wood duck with a ton of young. I counted 24 in this picture. I wanted to get closer for a better pic but she wasn’t happy and I didn’t want to separate any of them from momma.

I have never been so frustrated with the spring run before… Just when things look like they are ready to get going good, the fish disappear again. I was out on Monday, I did over 30 miles on the river and found nothing. The water was cleaning up but still pretty dirty. I decided to give it a day off and try again this morning.

Mike and I found a few fish right off the bat. The clarity was much better and the fish were willing to come up. We doubled up on keepers in the first 5 minutes or so.

We did OK for the remainder of the morning… We had another 3 keepers and a bunch of smaller fish. We had hits on just about everything we threw. The Sebile Stick Shadd was a blast. We used both the floating and suspending versions and caught on both. Houdini’s in Arkansas Shiner did well as did the Magnum Super Spooks. We caught fish in up to 12 feet of water but most were in the 4-6 foot range. I’ll be back out on Thursday and Friday, hopefully things continue to improve!

After weeks of high, cold, dirty water if finally looks as if our striper season is starting to crank up here in the Connecticut River. Normal flows in the Hartford area are usually around 3 to 4 feet. As you can see, we’ve been well above that for quite some time. The water is warmin up, we’ve had 48 to 49 in the main stem with temps over 60 in some the coves. The alewives are in pretty thick in places and finally some bigger stripers are on the hunt!

After closing up Conneticut Outfitters for the day, Mike swung by and picked me up at 6:30 and we headed out for the night bite. The river was barely launchable where we were, but we managed to get the boat in the river. We headed straight to the mouth of a creek that has a decent run of alewives. There the water was much cleaner and warmer than the main river. We immediately saw signs of life. I tied on a 9″ Reaction Strike Revolution Shad and began fan casting the area. On the second cast, I had a big wake come up behind the lure and follow it for 20 feet back to the boat. This happened several times without getting a hit. We weren’t worried, the lures were the perfect immitation of an alewife, we just needed it to get a bit darker out. As it began to get dark, we could see and hear stripers smashing bait on top… It was only a matter of time…

I have no idea what time, but it was good and dark out, we began getting hits. It was just a slow and steady retrieve with an occassional twitch. The hits were vicious! We threw lots of different lures from soft plastics to wood… Bombers, pencils, spooks, Slug-Go’s, Houdini’s and danny’s but in the end, all of our fish came on the big Revo Shads.

It was a great night on the water, no wind at all and no bugs (yet). It got chilly towards the end but we were dressed for it. Here are a couple of pics of the two largest fish for the night.

It’s been tough to find much time to fish these days with Connecticut Outfitters being so busy, so when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped on it. Mike met me at the house around 6:30 tonight and we loaded the gear in my truck and headed out in the monsoon. Another inch or so of rain is forecsat for tonight. The main river is cranking and dirty in our area so we went to a creek that I had found alewife in earlier in the week. I knew the water would be high but at least there would be some visibility…

I had a decent fish roll on my Revo Shad on my very first cast but he never came back again. There were plenty of alewives around, I actually snagged one as he was trying to mate with the lure on the retrieve.

I played with a couple of other lures and sizes as it got darker but finally tied on a black and purple Bomber… That’s what the wanted. I only got one fish to the bank but dropped another and missed 3 other fish. It sure felt good to get the dust off the rod. It only gets better from here!