Today was the day we did our annual trip with Nikon. One of the Sales managers, a client and the rep split between 2 boats for a day of stripers. Captain Eric Matland took the rep, Bryan and I had Jim and Randy in my boat. It was a hell of a day between the two boats with close to 70 fish boated. Eric and Bryan did well with soft plastics while my guys had a field day with top waters. We started just south of the rail road bridge and drifted close to 2 miles, catching fish the whole way. The foggy sunrise was a great back drop for the action.

We kept picking away. Nothing big landed but we had a couple of shots at 40″ range fish. One came completely out of the water to take a spook. She was on the hook for a good 20 seconds and was gone… Here are a few pics from a very good day on the river:

I thought for sure that the lower river would be a zoo all weekend long but I got a text from Josh saying that the ramp parking lot was full but no one was out on the flats…  It took me just a few minutes to get my stuff together and make a phone call. Mike met me at the house at 3:30 and we headed south.

The wind was cranking when we got to the flats. We had a couple more hours left in the outgoing tide and with the wind out of the southeast, there was a good chop going. We slowed down just after the first rockpile to take a look at the Side Imaging. I couldn’t believe how many fish were there! Mike hooked up on his first cast and it never stopped for the next 5 hours…

Over the next 5 hours, we boated 41 keepers. Nearly all of them were caught on big Super Spooks. As well as they were working, we tried other lures just to see what they would hit. We caught a couple on Houdini’sbut they were totally keyed in on the spooks. There were stretches were we went 10 consecutive casts with either a hook up or a hit. Eventually, I put the rod down for almost an hour so that I could get some video of the action. We could have easily done over 50 fish… I’ve never seen anything like it. The bite lasted through the outgoing, slack and well into the incoming tide. Normally the fish transition as the water flow changes but we never moved more than 1000 feet the entire trip. We just moved back and forth along the break on the trolling motor and kept casting.

As it got darker, I tied on a 7″ Revolution Shad to see if maybe we could get them to hit something different. In the hour, I had boatedanother 6 keepers on it. Normally, I work them eratically, twitching them and snapping them in between quick retrieves. Today, a steady retrieve was what the wanted. I reeled them just fast enough that the lure would create a slight wake but not break the surface. Some of the hits were spectacular. One fish came out of the water about 3 feet way from the lure and landed on it…

My charters had been launching a bit earlier to get a jump on the bass in shallow water. The last couple of times out, it had paid off with lots of action on the flats. Not so much this morning… Jerry drove all the way down from New Milford for a 4 am launch. The last of the storms had just rolled through and the wind was still strong, gusting over 15 which made boat controll a challenge. We were the only ones out on the water, including the bass. I was marking a few fish on the side imaging but not nearly the numbers we had seen on previous trips. By 5, we had a few explosions on top water but no hook ups so I decided to head north to where the tide was moving better.

15 minutes later we stopped in an area that had produced for us before. We had hits on pencil poppers on the first 2 casts. We spent the next couple of hours within a mile of that spot. Most of the fish were smaller but the hits on top were spectacular. There was now warning with the tell tale wakes behind the plugs or boils, just explosions. We had fish up to 38″ and put 8 or so in the boat before the bite slowed. Here are a couple of pics:

After that bite died, we headed out to the reefs with eels to see if we could find some better fish. First stop was Long Sand Shoal. The incoming tide was cranking. Our drifts were 3 1/2 MPH and the water was very dirty, making visibilty all but zero. From there, we went east to Hatchett Reef. Things were much better there. The drifts were a bit over 2 and the water was nice and clean. We marked fish as soon as we pulled up in 50 feet of water. The action was OK. No big fish, but we managed a couple more bass and a bluefish before we ran out of time.

I have one more week of charters in the river and I’ll be back on the reefs full time, I’m really looking forward to getting back to Niantic again!

Monday’s trip was tough. We saw lots of fish when we first hit the flats but they wouldn’t commit to our plugs so we decided to head up river and chase pike instead. That went well but the stripers were really bothering me… I talked to my group for Tuesday and convinced them to meet me earlier in hopes that we would do better in the dark. Mike and Bill met me just after 4 at the ramp and we headed south. Launching early paid off on the first few casts when Bill hooked up

It was a steady pick of fish with afew good ones in the mix, top waters drew the most strikes. We never moved more than 100 yards from the fish, staying with them all morning. It was nice being cloaked in the fog and having them all to ourselves. They were in a very concentrated area and easy to find on the Humminbird side imaging. That was definitely was key in staying with them. As you can see in the screen shot here, there were tons of fish on the flat!

We had several other fish in the same area, most of them just over keeper sized. Sometime around 5 the for rolled in from the south and visibilty dropped off to nothing. I knew it would be a good morning at then, the bass would stay shallow and as long as we could stay stealthy on the trolling motor we could get them to eat. Big wooden spooks were working well. It can be tough to get the cadence down, but once you master that rythmic walk the dog, the bass found them irresistable. Mike hooked up on a good fish. They sure fight great in 3 feet of water…

 The top water bite lasted for a few hours with some real quality fish in the mix:

It was inevitable that the blues would eventually show up. Most were small, but there were also some bruisers in the mix. Mike had a monster on a spook. This one took a good 5 minutes to finally boat.

I’ll take calm, foggy mornings any day of the week. I Wish it was like this every morning…

Since all of my charters during the river run are in the mornings, it’s not often that I get out for an evening trip. Today was the unofficial Connecticut Outfitters Employee Appreciation Day. I celebrated by taking Josh and Mike out for some action on the flats. I can’t stand fishing in a crowd and was relieved to see that most of the boats had already come in by the time we put in at 6:30. As we cleared the bridge, it looked like most of the boats were on the east side, so we went west. When we started our drift, there was only one other boat on that side and they were over a mile away. We were into fish right off the bat. We fished Arkansas Houdini’s in 2-5 feet of water with the outgoing tide. There were a ton of fish up shallow, we were spooking hundreds as we drifted along. Josh switched over to a big spook and started getting hits right away, there was something about that rythmic side to side gliding action…

After a while, things slowed a bit and I decided to put a jig on. On the first cast I hooked up with what I thought was a massive striper. After a few minutes, the fish surfaced… It was no striper… I had foul hooked a sturgeon in the dorsal fin. I have seen sturgeon breach on the flats before but had never had the opportunity to see one up close. They are a protected species and really shouldn’t be removed from the water, but I couldn’t get the hook out. We never brought here in the boat so I have no idea how long it was but I’m guessing roughly 4 feet long. We managed to get a few pictures. What a cool looking fish!

We kept picking away at the bass and as it got a bit darker out, the action began to pick up as did the size of the fish… At one point we had a double and very nearly a triple header of good sized fish on. They were all hitting soft plastics. With fish blowing up all around us, the excitement was contagious, Mike couldn’t help but give us his best Skeet Reese imitation.

Josh had a hell of a hit on a spook. The fish measured 38″ and so far is his biggest of the season. The fog really got thick and things got damp and chilly in a hurry so we packed it in around 9:30. It was a great night to fish. Here are a few more pics of some of our bigger fish from the evening: