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Bass, blues, brothers and sisters
Posted by: | CommentsToday was a blast… I had Paul along with his daughter Matina and son Nick. They just wanted to catch fish. There was no real preference for size or species. I figured we’d start the day with porgy and see if we could fight our way through the blues for a big bass or two before switching over to the roving blitzes on the shallow reefs.
Porgy were no problem at all today. Since we weren’t planning on fishing the deep water for long, I didn’t need many. We grabbed a quick dozen and headed out to the rock piles. It was still nice and dark when we got there.
It took a couple of drifts to get the angle I wanted to drift over the rocks but once we figured that out we found the fish pretty quick. Paul hooked up and fought the first one solo. Having never caught anything bigger than a largemouth bass, the kids were in awe of how big the bass was.
Everyone was pretty excited and couldn’t wait to do it again… It didn’t take long. This time the kids took turns cranking on the fish with some help from dad. Another nice fish!
On the third fish, Nick decided he wanted to do this one on his own. He almost had it, but these fish were just a little to strong for him. I had to jocky the boat around a bit but we eventually got the fish to the boat. I gave Nick a quick lesson on holding a big fish for the camera and he looked like a pro right away.
We could hear the birds working bait on top nearly a mile away. The kids wanted to see their first bluefish so I rigged up a couple of spinning rods and we headed over to the blitz. There were quite a few bass mixed in along with the blues. There were fish of all sizes feeding on butterfish in the rip. I saw bass that were pushing 40 inches, there were blues from 16″ to well over 33″. The bluefish we boated were throwing up butters from the size of your thumbnail up to fish close to 5″ long. The one in this picture was still alive when he hit the floor of my boat… I tossed him back and he swam right off again. The kids had a ball playing with fish that were a bit more their size. I don’t know how many they caught but I suspect theit arms will be sore for a little bit.
Here is a video of the days action:
Well deserved day
Posted by: | CommentsWe’ve been working hard lately without many fish to show for our efforts. The blues were pretty bad over the last few trips. I was expecting more of the same today. As it turns out, we needn’t have worried. Scott and his son, Dylan met me at the ramp around 4:30 and we were catching bait just before 5. My first drop of the morning produced a keeper scup and it just continued from there. We grabbed a quick dozen or so and ran a few miles to the first hump.
I was surprised at how fast the tide was dumping, we had drifts over 3MPH. Not ideal conditions but the guys found a couple of fish pretty quick. Dylan hooked a small one that went around 35″. Scott got a decent one out in 60 feet of water, this one went 42″
Things slowed after that. The tide was tough to fish in the deep water, so we moved a few miles to a spot that was only 20 feet or so. It was a quick trip but by the time we got there, the tide was DEAD! 5 miles between spots and the tide was completely different. We fished for a bit, but decided we should be using the slack tide to reload on bait so that we would be ready once it started running again. We spent 45 minutes or so and sorted through some smaller baits to get what we needed. By the time we got back on the pile, the tide had turned and was running nicely.
The guys were on instantly with a double. Dylan somehow lost his fish half way in… While his father was still fighting his fish, I threw another porgy on Dylan’s line and had him drop down again… FISH ON! It was a minor fire drill but we got both fish in.
Although we didn’t have any more doubles, it was fast action for the remainder of the trip. The blues were present but never really out of control. We lost a couple of hooks and boated one blue that measured just over 36″. Here are a few more pics from the rest of the trip.
2 fer Tuesday
Posted by: | CommentsI had back to back trips today. Bob and his son, Jameson were up first. We left the dock just before 5, we grabbed a few baits and hit the closest rock pile. The tide was great and we got into fish pretty quick. Sunrise was at 5:19, and as you can see by the background, the sun wasn’t much up over the horizon when we started catching. Jameson boated a couple of good fish right away.
We were fishing in about 25 feet of water and with the tide moving quick, it took 10 ounces to hold bottom. The fog rolled in sometime aroun 8 and it got real thick, real quick. It made moving around a bit difficult. I wanted to run to to another spot about 10 miles away but decided to stay close… As the tide increased, the action slowed. We caught a few more fish throughout the morning but none were much over 40″.
We were back at the dock by 11. I spent a few minutes cleaning the boat and met up with Ed and Ken for the next trip. I still had a few baits left from the morning session, so we went straight back to where I had left the fish earlier. I was marking them on the Humminbird, holding tight to the bottom in 27 feet of water. The tide had turned and wasn’t running real hard yet. By now, the fog had started to burn off making life a little easier. Ken hooked up first with a decent fish.
We missed a few fish and lost a couple over the next hour. Ken hooked up again, this time with a better fish.
By this time, we were low on bait, so we ran inside for some more porgy. I don’t know what happened, but they just seemed to vanish. We fished all of my usual spots but finally decided to run about 5 miles to the east. We eventually found enough to continue fishing but, once again, as the tide picked up to over 2.5MPH, the action really slowed. We had a few more hits and managed a couple mor fish bit overall, it was a slow afternoon…
A 50 for Larry’s 50th!
Posted by: | CommentsDay 2 with Larry and Paul. Yesterday was a blast, lots of fish with some quality in the mix. Today was much tougher. The tide was cranking hard and bait was a challenge. We managed a few decent scup and decided to head out with what we had. We were marking fish right where they should have been but they just weren’t hungry enough to come up off the bottom in the heavy current. My theory is that with the full moon and cloudless night before, they fed heavily all night long and were just lazy once the sun broke over the horizon. If we were going to catch, we were going to have to hit them in the nose with the bait.
That’s exactly what happened to Larry on one drift. The porgy never got nervous, the rod tip never twitched. There was one thump and the rod went down. After about 75 yards of line came off the reel, I decided to start the boat and chase the fish. Larry got up on the bow and kept steady pressure while cranking line back on the reel. I knew this was a big fish and my heart was pounding…especially when the fish surfaced about 100 feet in front of us. Now that we were not in danger of losing the fish in the rocks, I kicked the boat out of gear and let Larry do the rest and grabbed the video camera. We finally got here boat side and I lipped her with the Boga Grip. The Boga has a lanyard on it attaching to one of my cleats so we left her in the water while I got the hook out, cleared the rods off the deck and got the camera ready…
What better present for your 50th birthday than a striper in the 50′s???? Nice job Larry!!!!!!
There were a few other fish that morning but anything else I post is just filler at this point so I’ll leave it at that! What a gorgeous fish… Thanks again, Larry, see you soon!
Electroshocking with the DEP
Posted by: | CommentsI had the chance to join the crew lastnight on Squantz and jumped on it. We met at 7:30 at the ramp and were in the water by 8. The shocking is most always done at night as the fish are shallow and easy to spot in the floodlights. Our target for sampling were largemouth, smallmouth, trout and walleye.
I was a newbie to the shocking surveys and was surprised at how structured the surveys are. It makes sense that there needs to be a consistent survey though so that the samples can be compared over previous years. Water clarity is measured (we has a little less than 6 feet), water temp and weather conditions are noted. We had very specific zones, each zone received exactly 500 seconds of shocking. The probes hang off the bow of the boat and cover roughly a 10×10 area. A generator runs and builds up a charge that is then passed into the water by stepping on a pedal for a determined number of seconds. The boat is bumped in and out of gear and creeps along the shoreline at a crawl.
Two of us stand on the bow with long handled nets and scoop up the stunned fish. The fish are dropped in a livewell to recover and two technicians take them out one at a time. Sex is determined, the fish are measured and a scale sample taken. At that point the fish are returned to the lake and swim off under their own power. There is a counter that tracks the total number of seconds that the probes are in use. 500 seconds was the limit last night, at that point we make our way on to the next zone.
The first two stops were slower than I was expecting. We saw lots of yellow perch, white perch, bluegill and HUGE carp. Once we moved on to the next two zones, all hell broke loose!
We had walleye everywhere and BIG ones! It was tough to keep up with them as they appeared out of the murky water. We were scooping 4 and 5 at a clip and dropping them in the livewells. In one spot we had close to 30 fish in the well and the techs were doing their best to keep up with us.
Taking scale samples
Big walleye… Almost 30″
Fast and furious
I had a blast. It was great to see how the studies are done. We wrapped up jut a bit before midnight and sampled well over 100 fish. There were quite a few smallies, a couple of big largemouths and some beautiful browns in the mix. Most often we were with spitting distance of the shore and in less than 4 feet of water. I was amazed at how many big fish were in so tight to shore. Thanks to the DEP for the invite, I had a great time!!!
CT River crappie
Posted by: | CommentsWinter storm Benedict has really put a dent in my ice fishing. Enough was enough, I had to get back out onthe river! After 2 days of work to cut a 2 mile trail through the woods, I finally made it back to the cove. There were areas with snow half way up my thigh. The truck was able to make some decent headway, but without significant ground clearance, I would get stuck quite a bit. I’d shovel the truck out and pack the trail down behind me to get up a head of steam and hit it again… A lot of work but fun.
Part one
Part two
With a passable trail, Mike and I hit the cove again. I had hoped that the snow had soaked and refrozen, but it was still a mess. There was a good 18″ of snow sitting on the ice and the second we punched holes , the ice flooded. It was a soupy mess for most of the morning but we dealt with it and caught a mess of fish. We got on one of the cribs again and had a field day with panfish. Mostly bluegill, but there were yellow perch, white perch and a few good crappie too
Local ice!
Posted by: | CommentsIt was supposed to be a scouting trip… <ike and I checked this spot on Wednesday on our way home from Woodcreek and there was roughly 1/4″. I was stunned to find that it was safe this morning. We weren’t prepared to fish and with just over an hour before I had to get to the shop, I didn’t have time to run home for my gear.
We made the best of what we had. We had a couple of rods kicking around and I dug a couple of jigs out of my console in the truck. The auger and spud never leave the truck this time of year so we popped a few holes real quick.
We ended up with a dozen perch bass and crappie. I only took a couple of quick pics because I sent all my time playing with my underwater camera ;D I may have time to post some video tonight, but in the mean time here are a couple of pics… Didn’t have time to check this morning, but I think I can get on one of the big coves for some real fish tomorrow afternoon ;D :tipup:
Mike with a MONSTER bass that slammed his jig…
Some cool formations in the ice…
5-4 Sunrise stripers
Posted by: | CommentsThe action was great while it lasted. Mike and I were on the water for 5. As soon as we pulled up to our spot we could see herring dimplng the surface. Every once in a while a bass would swirl on one. I think it took all of 2 casts for us to hook up. Mike was throwing a Storm Chug Bug and I was chucking the 9″ Revo Shad. The water was up to 60 today and the hits were explosive, there is nothing like the sound of a good sized striper on the surface inhaling a plug…
My biggest of the day came just before sunrise, it was a wicked hit 10 feet from the boat. No warning boil, just an explosion 10 feet from the boat.
Mike had a surprise pike in an area with a ton of current. She must have come out from the flats to chase the herring. When the fish hit, we thought for sure it was a nice striper. Gotta say, we were a bit disappointed to see that it was a pike.
We moved around a lot and had several more fish, every one of them were keepers this morning. Once the sun got bright it was over… I think we had 2 more hits after 7:30. We rode up and down the river for a couple more hours looking in our normal spots but that was it. Great day on the water…
April 30 Keepers in a crowd
Posted by: | CommentsWord is out that there are decent fish in the river. That, combined with nice weather motivated a whole bunch of guys to roll out of be early and join in on the fun that up until now we had had to ourselves. Incredibly strong winds and cold ovenight temps have kept me off the water for a couple of days. Water temps had dropped almost 3 degrees, not a bad development in the big picture.
Mike and I struggled for the first hour of the trip, the fish weren’t in the same places we had left them earlier in the week. We made some adjustments and fished a bit deeper in 8-15 feet of water. That move paid off quickly and often. Mike hooked up the first keeper on a fast sinking version of the Revoltion shad.
The fish were not real agressive today, we had lots of hits but they weren’t the usual crushing, violent hits. I don’t know if it was the combination of bright sun, cooler water temps or boat traffic but we really had to slow down today. We ended up heading way north away from the crowds, we ran almost 15 miles to a spot that we had to ourselves and repeated the same pattern, low and slow. We had the same results. lots of hits and few hook ups with some decent fish in the mix. I had to be at work by 10 so we packed it in early, lots of new striper lures to price and hang!
4-21-10 Still no keepers
Posted by: | CommentsWell, no one can say that I’m not putting my time in… I launched at 5 AM in Rocky Hill with Josh. We fished all the usual spots with the same results. Clean water at 50 degrees and herring at every stop. We threw Houdini’s Revolution Shads and Bass Harassers and covered depths from 3 to 12 feet without a sniff. We finally caved in around 7 and switched over to pike. I think we boated 5 and had many more hits. Here is the big one from this morning. She hit a 7″ Revolution Shad.
