The weather folks have predictably mis-forecasted the weather for the past couple of weeks. No foolin’? Last night a big cold front came through, which made fishing today speculative at best. However, it’s been way too long for Walt & I not being able to wet a line, so we said let’s give it a shot.
When we arrived at the launch around 7:30 am, the air temp was a brisk 57 degrees. About 10 min. later when we started fishing, the water temp was 69 degrees. The wind was blowing pretty well at the launch – 10 to 15 mph. So, it was cold! Typical New England spring day.
This is what the ride out looked like:
Deceivingly nice, right? Not! The cold NE wind chilled you to the bone. Maybe it’s just our age, but it’s getting tougher and tougher to endure the cold anymore. We started at the north end of the lake, as the wind was blowing SW, toward the launch. Within a few minutes we had the first crappie in the boat. Then a double! Things were looking up, despite the cold front. Here’s one of the first:
Get a load of my new hat! AND…..that bottle of “G” Sauce which we used during the day (THANKS Slab!):
Couldn’t get a better picture, but you’ll get the idea. My wife suggested I use a small “snack” size zip lock bag to spray the baits with in order to reduce waste. It worked!
Here’s one of Walt’s crappie:
And another of mine:
Looks cold eh? It WAS! LOL! Anyway, we ended the day around 2 pm with a total of 42 fish. One rainbow trout (which refused to be landed!), a small LM bass and 2 bluegill. Most were caught on straight tails, but the RR’s had their moments along with the Slider grubs. Of note was Mr. Crappie’s “Sausage” heads, with solid tube-type body. It did pretty well too. None of our fish were really “picture worthy”, but I figured I’d give you an idea of what we caught. Have not located any big females yet. Probably more shallow than we are prepared to try.
The winds today were extremely variable and made boat control difficult, especially with the side pulling motor mount. Changing the head around so that we could use the forward speeds vs. the reverse speeds, definitely increased our control. However, we need a relatively calm day in order to “learn” the ins & outs of this boat control presentation. It will come in time I’m sure.
No eagles today, but we had an osprey fly by a couple of times. Nice to see them again. Hope you all had a change to get out today as well.