Open water Massachusetts 6/8/14

Conditions: Sunny skies, air temperature 80 degrees, water temperature 74 degrees and zero wind

Arrived at the lake early as I wanted to do some sonar mapping with the Lowrance Elite 7 HDI. This unti allows you to record sonar as you move around the lake and Lowrance has a online program that allows you to upload that data and they send you back a detailed contour lake map. The maps that are available on the East Coast are very generic and be doing this process, this allows us to see a lot mot things on a body of water that a good majority of anglers have no idea what is down there.

After doing this for a while, and still thinking that the fish may be spawning, I started the morning on a flat in a creek mouth that generally holds a number of fish this time of year. Fairly shallow water, from 2 - 8 feet of water and generally there are good clumps of weeds that the fish can hide in. After fishing around the area I am seeing that with the late winter that we had, The vegetation isn't close to where it should be at this time of year. In general, I am finding that consistently wherever we have fished this spring. Fishing this area produced nothing for bites so went back to mapping a different part of the lake. This area is a cove that has some very irregular contours with a few underwater humps as well. Started fishing on one of these humps and it is around 6 feet deep and has a good amount of vegetation on top of it. Didn't take long and connected on the first fish of the day, didn't even feel it bite as it was just there. Was fishing a lizard plastic bait Texas rigged with an 1/8oz weight. The fish gave a great fight and was a solid 2 pound largemouth but was long and thin. Basically continued doing the same thing all around the lake and just looking for different little things that maybe the fish were concentrated in. Made for a tough day of fishing as the heat and no wind really started taking a toll and we left the lake before noon.

We will probably be heading back to New Hampshire soon again and head for a lake that we fish very frequently...until our next report...may your line be TIGHT and FISH ON...