Anyone getting out?

[richg99]

I go when I can. Solunar can be very helpful, but I often cannot time my trips based on the calendar.

 

[onthewater102]

FINALLY made it out last Friday the 27th...50 degrees, early sunny skies quickly changed to on-again off-again rain with a steady wind that cut a chill to your bones...who cares, I was finally out for 2018.

There wasn't a reliable pattern anywhere, we caught fish on jerkbaits, spinnerbaits, spider grubs, swimbaits, underspins, hair jigs, chatterbaits...just about anything we put on. The location seemed to matter bait by bait, but just as soon as we caught two or three fish out of an area and thought we were onto something the area would go dead and we'd have to move and switch to something else.

I wish we had a thermometer with us to know what surface temperatures we were seeing. There didn't seem to be large numbers of fish anywhere. The biggest fish were all close by to deep water, none came from the backside of coves, which was probably the only universally applicable piece of intel we gleaned all day long.

My most productive bait was the underspin with a 3" paddle tail swimbait on it. Big fish came from steep dropping slopes where I'd cast the bait into 4' or 5' of water, let it sink to the bottom, pop it back up and reel up enough line that it would swing like a pendulum the rest of the way back to the boat. Bites were coming from somewhere deeper than 10', probably all the way down to 20'. My partner caught fish shallow on a spinnerbait, spider grub and jerkbait, but his big girl (5lb 14oz) came on a 4.8" paddle tail swimbait on a 3/8oz jighead.

Total body count was 77 fish across 6 species. Probably 4:1 mix of LMB to SMB, with about a dozen chunky rock bass, a few yellow perch, a poor bluegill who caught a chatterbait hook just above his eyes and a few slime darts including one that was 3lbs+ and made its way into the only slimer picture I'll probably take for the year. My top 5 were somewhere between 18 and 19lbs, which I'll take in CT any day.

 

[LDUBS]

OTW, thanks for the fantastic report and for including the details. It is a very enjoyable read. You had one heck of a great day on the water.

 

[onthewater102]

Headed to a pond in the northwest CT corner to avoid the rain, which worked as planned. Water temps were surprisingly high, 62/63 everywhere, but the weeds were just starting to show green on them in places. Overcast conditions had me expecting an active bite just about everywhere - couldn't have been further from the truth. 12 fish in 4+ hours of effort and no more than two from the same general area. Bites came on swimfish, chatterbaits, jerkbaits and a curly tail grub, almost all from skinny water (3' or less).

Brought the little guy with me thinking we'd be seeing a lot more bites than we ended up with, so other than the big slimer and fat girl I handed the rod over to him after hooking each as the wind was seriously restricting his casting range - so it was a team effort. He makes the pictures come out better anyway!

 

[richg99]

Cute kid. Nice bass and the Northern, too.

Better results than I had for two days of fishing here in TN recently.

 

[onthewater102]

That was a big pickerel - thankfully no pike in the waters we were fishing yesterday.

 

[LDUBS]

Best pic's I've seen in a while! Those are some pretty decent fish and must have seemed like monsters to him.

 

[onthewater102]

Hit the same pond yesterday under seemingly similar conditions and nada - not so much as a sniff from a shallow fish and couldn't locate anything willing to chew at or around the first depth break. No real signs of any movement anywhere. That's spring fishing for you though, there one day & gone the next. Cold front passing through the day before certainly didn't help matters.

Called it quits after 3 hours. Skunk'd

 

[richg99]

Spent five hours toda....8 to 1.... in our local bass club tournament. These contests are all held on the 11 lakes within the subdivision. Biggest bass ever weighed, over 25 + years, was 9 lbs, I believe.
That is NOT typical. Most five-fish stringers come in around 5 to 7 lbs to WIN! As you can see, not much is expected nor is much ever produced.

Our 3.5 lbs today was typical of the results, though this particular contest brought a half dozen teams in with 7 lbs or more. Largest fish weighed that I saw was around 4 lbs.

Hotter than normal out there today. I think this area of TN. is setting heat records for this time of the year.

Oh well, nap time now.

rich

 

[LDUBS]

Sounds good. Even getting skunked sounds good. I'm not catching many from here on the couch. Haha. Latest update is I should have the boat at the end of the month. At least I have been getting a lot of house projects done.