Fishing July 18 2009

Cool temps and very cool nights are making it tough to think that summer is even here in New England. But the waters are open and inviting and the fish are still out there swimming around searching for food, so wetting a line is always a good way to spend the day in the outdoors with your kid.

We went out early in search of bass and whatever was willing to bite. My goal was to catch as many bass as I could and my son’s goal was to catch whatever wanted to bite. First stop was in front of a dam face to see if any fish were using the feed trough that was there in front. Fishing a wacky rigged BearPaw Hippie stick in black/blue color, first cast to the front of the dam a 1.5 pound largemouth bass was into the boat.

Is nice having a location like this that you know that you can pull up on and catch a fish from it almost every time. Tried a little longer but that was the only fish there. Left the area and headed for a big cove that is deep on the outside and comes up on the inside onto a rock shoal.

I was fishing the area with a medium running crankbait in depths of 8 to 12 feet of water. My son was fishing a shiner and bobber and starting catching some nice perch that made him very happy. Wasn’t long and the crankbait started putting numbers of bass into the boat but they were all cookie cutter size around 1.5 pounds each.

Fishing this cove area yielded 5 largemouth bass to the crankbait but couldn’t find anything of great size. Ran around to a couple of other areas and they weren’t producing either. Settled into the mouth of a long shallow cove and worked the Carolina rig and picked up a couple of similar sized bass on this bait. My son switches over to rattle trap bait and caught a huge perch as well as a pickerel.

That area seemed to die so we went back to the first cove and caught another bass there but still no size. My son wanted to end fishing and go play on the beach so dropped him off and grabbed another partner to try the other end of the lake. It was early afternoon at this point and high hot sun was out with little wind happening.

We decided to work an area that was a big flat of 4-8 foot depth of water. First cast with the rattle trap bait yielded the same size bass as earlier in the day. Between working the rattle trap and a Carolina rig, was able to put a couple of bass into the boat but size was still average at that.

The two of us worked areas that we have never fished trying to find a honey hole that would give us something with size to it. My partner was fishing a small minnow imitating swimbait and was catching bigger perch on that. Then he wedges this bait into some rocks and we went over to get it out of the rock and as we got there the line took off and broke the line just as fast. Would have been nice to see what that fish was but that is why they call it fishing and not catching.

Caught a couple more of the clone bass before we decided to call it a day and there were 13 bass caught as well as a number of perch and a pickerel. Not bad between two different partners and going from heavy mist cool damp morning to a hot calm sunny afternoon.

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