Well, don't expect any secret to be revealed here, nope, cannot do it, cause there is none to share! Luck is my secret, and sometimes it does things pretty well for you.
We went at Gate 31 last Saturday and Don suggested we fish our spots in reverse order from what we usually do. So we started from the channel that goes off on the left of the launching area where I caught a nice amount of largemouth last year around the same time. And the funny thing is, if you look at the pictures, you will see the same type of weather, cool and overcast.
I switched quickly from the usual plastic worm to my early-season best catching lure: the lizard! That river has a lot of grass at its bottom, so I thought that would work probably better. We fished down the river, the wind blowing down the boat at a pretty nice pace. It did not take long to catch the first largemouth, letting the lizard come down from the edge into the river. And voila:
This one was 3.8lb:
Then another one, 3.2lb:
and Then Don came back strong with first, a smallmouth of 1.8lb:
and he added another 3 pounder largemouth to our catch list for the day:
I have to say, i was super happy, we had a really good day, it feels good catching nice fish, and after the end of the Summer I had when we did not catch a single decent fish for weeks, this feels more like the normal routine :-)
We have (well I do) only have 2 more week ends of fishing, I hope we can catch as many nice fish as we did last week, that'd be a great ending for this 2007 fishing season!
I know, i have not posted for quite some time now. It has been a crazy Summer in so many different ways. Work has picked up big time, people have been starting to look for Halloween costumes since early August and we needed to get our website up and running, as well as adding new features, blah blah blah...
Also, we had a crazy Summer at home getting home improvements done and getting ready for the arrival of our baby girl in 6 weeks... I went fishing, yes, but I just did not take the time to write about it. Actually, I did not go for a few week ends in July as we took a vacation break, and other events have prevented me to go fishing a few week end in August and in early September as well.
Ok, now for the recap. Here are some pictures from the Summer, I lost track of the size of the fish, but as you can see on the photo & video, they are pretty nice:
This largemouth was caught on July 14th, at Quabbin, Gate 31:
This smallmouth was caught by Don the same day:
Don and I went to our first competition in AUgust, which ended up being a real nightmare as we did not catch one single fish. Just writing about it hurts my feelings again :-( the first team ended up with 15lbs+ of fish with a 6.5lb largemouth cath...Impressive. Of 20 or so boats, only 9 (I believe, Don correct me if I am wrong) had some fish to weight, so it wasn't just us being really bad at it that day!
I have one more recent story I am going to add right now. Something you should know is that even though I did not go fishing several week ends in a row, Don has invited his ling time friend Dennis to go fishing with him, and Dennis has proved to be quite successful at catching fish!! More to follow.
Saturday should have been a lucky day, 777 (July 07 2007), but it wasn't, really. Well, I should not complain, as many guys fishing on week ends would probably want to catch the nice smallmouth we caught this week end.
We went to Gate 31 for the first time this year and worked some of the spots we know pretty well. We did not catch anything on the main drop off area, so we decided to move on the other end to fish more drop offs. On the way, we hit (seriously, the prop did hit!) a shallow sandy area...after checking on the engine, Don suggested we tried fishing around it, with crazy drop offs of 30+ feet around it, it looked like a great spot.
It did not take long for Don to successfully back up his suggestion! A nice 2.8lb smallmouth bass, and we got a video:
We kept working on the area and I landed another smallmouth, 2.2lb:
We then moved on to the area where I had a blast on closing day, catching largemouth after largemouth, but we could not find them this year.
So overall, not a bad day, but not a great day either. I wished we caught another 2 or 3 decent fish, but I cannot complain!
...and only largemouth! I won't complain at all, neither will Don. What started as the worst day, ended up with the nice catch of several good size largemouth bass.
Gate 31 at Quabbin is most known for the smallmouth fishing. We caught quite a few smallies all over the place, and we still have so many areas to discover. The rocky structure and numerous drop offs all over the place offer a paradise for smallmouth bass. Yesterday was a first, unexpected I'd say...
The weather forecast from Friday night announced a shower or two passing by Quabbin on Saturday. If you read this blog, you know we can deal with showers, we did all year long! Good rain gear and motivation are the only things you need! Lucky us, we got both. So we decided to meet around 9:30AM, take our time, since we had planning to go out only 2 times more, better try to enjoy the day.
After 15mn on my way to meet Don, rain started to fall down..."hmm, that is probably the shower or 2 they talked about...", well no. 45mn into my trip, rain is still coming down and at one point, it's pouring down like a very bad thunderstorm. By the time I meet Don, it is still raining. We still give it a go (of course we're at Gate 31!) but as soon as we get on the water, the "good luck" from fellow anglers on their way back to the dock is a sign that this is going to be tough on the water!
If you do not believe me, check out this weather radar report for yesterday...I could not get it for the morning, this only covers this afternoon when it did not really rain much...still, blue is 1/2 inch of rain...imagine in the morning!
After a hour and a half of fishing and not a bite, we are ready to give up: rain is pouring down on us, literally, the wind gusts pick the cool up from the top of the water, we are drifting at 5mph, we are basically freezing our butts off...We finally reached an area where we can relax for 1/2 hour before leaving....and the unexpected started!
I had one of the best days of my fishing career honestly. Here is what happened: the area we were taking a break in had lots of weed at the bottom, a major split area with a lot of bait fish, and nice dropoffs around 15' to 19' deep...so we joked about it being the perfect spot for largemouth bass. Using a senko (after trying several crankbaits and spinnerbaits), I started to cover the main part of the area (the deepest) and after several casts, I was getting hits. Nothing huge, small guys playing and pulling on the senko. But finally something took my worm and stretched my line out:
I then caught another largemouth around 1.5lb and a smaller one...Don did not get a chance to catch any, but he was getting lots of hits. The wind started to push us down towards the dock which was good because time was running...and time was also running for Don to catch something! My lucky day kept getting better: I ended up catching a nicer largemouth:
And then another 1.5lb...And, of course, another nice largemouth one right after that one!
You could wonder what Don was waiting for...yes Don, what were you waiting for!? HAHAHAHAH. Seriously, Don was not taking any nap (this time ;-)), but he was working a lot harder than I was, first because he had to handle the boat all day long and yesterday was Hell), but also because he was trying to catch ONE bass!! The dock was getting close and pressure started building up on him to catch something...well, OF COURSE, Don finally did!
Don ended up catching largemouth one after the other! We ended up with around 10 catch I believe, most the catch happened within a 2 to 3 hours timeframe. We had at least 6 or 7 keepers and that makes us really happy! Finally a good day...and thank God for the rain gear!
Alright, I need to get this off the way. So far this year, we have not had ONE day of nice "fishing" weather...I don't mean nice weather, because it is different that nice "fishing" weather. Not one day out on the water without wind, showers or heat!!! We are not for asking much, just give us a calm, overcast warm day!
...we catch several smallies and have a great day on the weather? It was surely starting nicely. We launched the boat around 7:45AM and hit "the" dropoff area. The weather was perfect: no wind, warm temperature, and really sunny which was perfect to help smallmouth see through the water!
Using senkos (Yamamoto Senkos 5" Watermelon), we started to cast in 20 feet of clear water...hmmm...1st cast...2nd cast...3rd cast....BOOOOM! My first fish of day after 5 mn of fishing!!
A 2.3lb smallmouth bass. I did not give it a chance to fight, really fast retrieve and I use the net this time...
Right after that fish, Don gets lucky as well! What it going on today? Is this the day we get a chance to catch 20+ fish?
And then the weather changed...the wind picked up, thunderstorms started to come over our heads...arghhhh!!! And of course, the fish stopped hitting. OF COURSE!
We worked really hard all the rest of the day, changing baits, trying different areas but we only caught a few smaller fish:
Not a great day, but we still caught around 8 fish today. What we really need is the weather to comply a bit with us...we are planning to go fishing in New York in 2 weeks near Champlain...hopefully we'll get lucky...weather wise!!!
Today wasn't a day to spend outside, we probably went through 20 showers and basically spent the day in our rain gears. Gate 31 was a first for me, Don went the previous week already where he caught 3 nice smallmouth bass within a few hours (and he broke my smallmouth record of the year!) so we decided to give it a shot for a full day.
Gate 31 is located of route 122, it is really easy to access coming from East (route 202) or West (route 202 or route 122).
There are some great dropoffs, an average of 20 to 30 feet deep which is perfect to fish for smallmouth bass. Here are 2 spots we tried:
...but the wind really picked up and showers came over to say hi as Don can prove on that picture!
Yep, the weather really turned for the worse...
We did not get lucky really, we caught around 8 smallies, all on Senkos. Here is a video of Don catching one of them:
We also missed 3 nice fish: one could have been a largemouth bass that Don alsmost caught in shallows waters (real clear waters, around 4'-5' deep), the 2 other ones were smallmouth.
The largest smallie for the day broke my line when I got it near the boat...well, I thought I could grab him like pro anglers do...BIG MISTAKE! Don offered the net, I said no, and I paid the price! That fish could have been a smallmouth record breaker for me so far this year!! Ouch!
Quabbin is such a gorgeous place, take your kid(s) on a boat (rentals available), and go enjoy a nice day on Quabbin! There is a lot to watch like these cool duckies (does anyone know what these are?? Leave a comment if you do, thanks!):
We did not have a great day, but still good some luck. I want to go back at Gate 31 when the sun is really out, the bass probably move for closer from shore (since they were not here today!!) and we should have a great fishing day...I guess we'll figure this out really soon ;-)
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