"The Captain's Cask"…

Ok it’s getting towards the end of February 2019… here in the Northeast it is still winter… I sit here in my chair on the weekend and now with this new MLF Bass Pro Tour etc. I am taunted… all the time… by dudes fishing tournaments in Florida while it snows outside my window…

Anyway… re-rigged my rods today… with help from my cat, of course,

Here’s a few fishing photos from the past to help get through the next couple of months of cold air and hard water… Spring will be here sooooon….

Date: October 4-7, 2018

Time: Daytime

Location: Fishing Spot – Ricker Pond, Groton, Vermont

Weather: Cool, changeable…

Air Temperature: 50’s

Water Temperature: 50’s

Notes:

Took my semi-annual camping & kayak fishing trip to Ricker Pond this past October.

The weather was great for that time of year. A little bit of rain but not too much. Cool but not cold… chilly nights, nice campfires and great company.

Oh, and the fishing was pretty good this year too. You never know what the fishing is going to be like here. It can be on or off depending on the weather, water temps, time of year etc.

Typically, it’s the smallmouths that are biting, if any fish are. I typically end up with at least one nice 4+ pound smallmouth.

This year, it was the largemouths that were biting. I caught more largemouth this year than over the course of the prior 5 trips to this place combined. I got a 4 pound Larry and several more in the 2-3+ range.

Oh, and I did manage to land a few smallmouths. None quite as big a 4+ but one that was was 3 and 1/2 and another at 3. Good fighters too !

The go to baits for me this trip were: black football jig with blue craw trailers… havoc swimbaits and weightless creature baits or senkos.

Date: July 7-13, 2018

Time: Afternoon

Location: Fishing Spot: Belleau Lake, Wakefield, NH

Weather: Beautiful…

Air Temperature: 80’s and low 90’s

Water Temperature: 76-80

Notes:

My family’s big vacation this year was a week on Belleua Lake in WakeField, NH.

We took the kayaks as well as the Nitro Z-18 bass boat to switch things up a bit. As this was a family vacation and not week away for me to just fish all day I wasn’t able to fish every day or for more than a few hours when I did get the chance to go out and fish.

I had never been to Belleau Lake before so I did some research about it. You can find some of my information about it here. The information I could find was scant and mostly targeted towards real estate and home ownership on the lake. The fishing reports stated Largemouth bass, Smallmouth bass, Pickerel etc..

And, according to a couple of the locals I spoke with on the lake, there are BIG fish in this lake… of course there are ….

I found the lake to be shallow in a lot of places. The water also seemed to dark/muddy/very stained… it left a very grody scum ring around the waterline of my boat.

I even managed to find a rock that wasn’t marked in any way. Luckily, I was just cruising around mapping some sections at barely more than idle speed when I looked down my electronics and noticed the depth rapidly rising from 6 feet to 5 to 3 to… clunk ! WTF !

I didn’t find a lot of underwater structure or weeds either. On the North-Eastern part of the lake, I motored through some shallow water and into a small cove area. The center of the cove did have some fairly deep water which I found interesting. There was also a very nice stretch of lily pads along the undeveloped side of the cove. My first day through here, I didn’t catch any fish although the water was the most promising I had seen here on the lake thus far. I worked the middle of this cove as well as there seemed to be a hump of some sort there. Nothing. For the first few days, I spent my fishing time on the north/top part of the lake. I hadn’t caught any fish…

Later in the week, I decided to try the southern end of the lake and see if anything was biting down that way. At the southernmost part of the lake, I found some promising water… there was what looked like a very large floating bog of some sort… lots of lily pads and little islands of sticks & grass. I felt hopeful… I worked the outer edges of this bog mass as well as every off shore lily pad island… An hour later I was very frustrated… I started talking to myself… if this lake has Largemouth bass in it then they should be here… RIGHT HERE…

At that time, I was almost to the end of the main bog mass. I made a deal with myself that I would fish the next 90 feet of so of water and then pack up and head back to the dock.

I casted my Senko to a very loosely put together area of smaller lily pads… not the mat but a larger area with a lot of smaller lily pads close together… now, I hadn’t had a bite nor so much as a nibble in days… when it finally came on this cast… I was a bit late with the hook set as I had mentally checked out… I lost the fish… it’s a good thing that nobody was recording me right then… Again, I had a chat with myself and got my head back into the game…

Another cast of the Senko to the same general area… wait… wait… nothing… twitch… twitch.. nothing… curses begin forming at the back of my brain… reel up some slack… hmm… that feels … H E A V Y… time to SET THE HOOK !

Got him… landed a beautiful 3 pound Largemouth bass

I would end up catching THREE, count ’em THREE, Largemouth over that last 90 feet of bog mass… zero fish over the prior tens of acres of water yet three within an area that could be covered by a long cast… not complaining but this place is hard to figure out 🙂

In this same general area, I came across another local who had lived on the lake for many years. He too stated that there are lots of nice fish in the lake. I asked him what he generally catches. He said he always catches Largemouth. He’d never caught or seen a Smallmouth in the lake but they are supposed to be in there. He was shocked when I told him that I was just blindly casting off of the boat dock the day before and had lost a Smallmouth bass when it jumped and tossed my swim bait before I could reel it all the way in.

The last day, I went back to the bog area… I only managed to land a single Largemouth in the 1-2 pound range. BUT, I did catch one of those elusive Smallmouth bass too…

Pretty fish and a mad fighter even at that small size…

Date: June 23-29, 2018

Time: Afternoon

Location: Fishing Spot: Black Lake, NY

Weather: Variable…

Air Temperature: 70’s

Water Temperature: 72-74 ? Can’t be sure as I was on a friend’s boat and didn’t pay too much attention

Notes:

I’ve been to Black Lake twice prior to this trip. It’s a fantastic fishery for Northern Pike and Largemouth Bass.

The weather wasn’t all that great during this trip. It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t great either. Cooler temps, some rain and windy conditions throughout the week. The water level was also very low and even dropped throughout the week. We could tell because by the end of the week we were stepping down into the bass boat from the dock whereas at the beginning of the week that wasn’t the case.

The fishing was either on or off… we’d motor up to a spot and start fishing. One of two things would happen… we’d start hitting Northern Pike almost immediately or we wouldn’t… it got the point where if we didn’t hook something with the first ten casts then the next thousand casts weren’t going to produce any fish either.

It was truly the week of a thousand casts/day. Even my back and shoulders were feeling it by the end of the week.

The bait of the week was a spinner bait. We could cover a lot of water and work them over, around and through the weedy sections of the lake where we tended to focus our efforts.

I lost a few nice Northern Pike in the weeds too… they’d hit my spinner bait and then run right down into the thick weeds… the bigger pike tended to run further and wrap a ton of weeds in my line… so much so that they were able to break off… ARGH !

I did land some nice pike though. My buddy took biggest fish of the week (twice !)… he landed an 8 1/2 pound Northern Pike and an hour later he hooked into 7 pounder !

Here’s a few fish photos…

We stayed at Fisherman’s Landing this trip. Nice folks and generally nice, clean cabins.

And, we eat well on these trips too 🙂

Date: May 111, 2018

Time: 7:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Location: Fishing Spot: Wequaquet Lake, Barnstable, Massachusetts

Weather: Sunny and calm to start… but the wind came up and was whipping 10-15 mph. I got lots more practice on the trolling motor today.

Air Temperature: Mid 60’s

Water Temperature: Low 60’s

Notes:

This was the second tournament of the year for the South Shore Bassmasters.

Wequaquet Lake was another new lake for me. I’d never fished here before but I still felt confident that today was going to be a good day for me. The weather had warmed up a bit. I’d done some research online about the lake and felt that I had a workable approach to the day.

I had a feeling that there would be fish up shallow and on flats either spawning or getting ready to spawn. I started the morning by casting a spinner bait and a swim bait in 4-8 feet water on a calm flat. I was seeing smallmouth bass following my spinner bait a few times but none of them would take the bait. I wasn’t having any luck with a silver swim bait either.

I trolled around a point and started using a black jig and blue trailer combo along contour lines in about ten feet of water – which didn’t turn up any fish either.

I figured I’d move closer to shore and try to see if anything was up close or around any docks or walls etc. This was when the WIND STARTED BLOWING… argh I hate wind while fishing… The wind was incessant and becoming stronger and where I was on the lake gave the wind a clean shot at me.

I moved out into the middle of the lake to a location where there were some humps that came up from 20 feet to 4-6 feet. If I was going to get blasted by the wind I could at least make it work for me by using the wind to float me across the humps. I dragged the hums with same black jig and also a jerkbait. No luck…

Next I moved to spots on the lake that were behind points or islands that would block the wind to some extent. It was really blowing hard and was incessant. There were no breaks. It just kept blowing.

As the day wore on, I cruised around a bit and tried a few more locations. I managed to find a few fish but for whatever reason I couldn’t seem to hook the ones that counted. The seemed to be picked up my bait but not ingesting it. I’d feel a fish on the line. I’d set the hook. The fish would let go… I lost my best fish when it spit my spinnerbait when it jumped about ten feet from my boat.

I really struggled today in the high winds… I have a 70 pound thrust trolling motor on my bass boat. It has 5 speeds, 1 thru 5. I typically have my trolling motor set to 4 as it provided enough thrust to troll me around under most conditions. Today, not so much. At the 4 setting, I was unable to hold my position in the wind… the wind would slowly push me backward such that I was unable to actually sit on a spot an work it at all. Setting 5 is like hitting a rocket booster when you push the petal down. It’s so strong that it’s difficult to use as the initial thrust will knock you off the boat if you aren’t ready for it. You also have to constantly steer as the high speed takes the boat off it’s line rather quickly.

Most fish caught today during the tournament, and there were some big fish and bags caught, were bed fish… the anglers were able to either drop their power poles or utilize their stronger, high tech, gps-enabled trolling motors to be able to work a spot and catch those bedding fish.

The 2 fish I did land didn’t count… the first was a smallmouth bass that wasn’t much bigger than the black senko I caught it on. The second was a nice 4 pound Pike ! I’d zero’d for the tournament but not for the day 🙂 And, again, I learned a lot and saw a new body of water too !

Some Photos of the Day: