Well, it's the time of the year. The weather is getting better, the temperature is rising nicely, we get the Spring fever, gotta get out of the house...it's time to go fishing! Don and I had a pretty heavy Winter project, rebuilding the Don's barn...it only took us all Winter long :) but we made it. Well, I just helped, I am no handy guy but I can help "you can do that, nail that, paint that..." I like helping out when i can.
Anyway. Don got the boat checked out, everything was ok, so we decided to make our first trip out of the season. When it's so early in the season, I do not expect much from a fishing day. I hope to catch fish, yes, but I don't expect catching any good size fish. I am not a slow retrieve fishing person, I have a tough time with it, so since the fish are in slow-action-mode right now (until water temperature raises to the 65-70 degrees), I know I was not going to have a great day.
For our opening day, we went to Quabbin this year, actually the pond located at Gate 43, not the main water. Saturday was a beautiful day, a bit chilly in the morning because of the 10mph wind, but it got up in the 70's in the afternoon. As soon as left the boat ramp, Don and I talked about what to expect for the day and we both agreed: "no bass, but pickerels!"...
Let's reach our favorite spots! Full speed!!
Don decided to go with a top water 6 inc long crankbait, and I, as usual early in the season, started with my watermelon plastic lizard.
Within the first 5mn, Don had already caught the first pickerel of the season.
We really fished one area in particular that day, but we did not find any bass. We ended up with around 20 pickerels, all of the same size or close, some gave better fights than others, so it was a great day to get the feeling back for casting and striking.
This week, Don and I went fishing the Pottapaug Pond located at Quabbin Reservoir Gate 43.
It's a really nice lake, it offers great largemouth fishing in low deep water areas with lots of lily pads (starting June). Saturday (May 6th) morning was amazing, a beautiful day, cool but not "too" cold...Unfortunately, it became overcast, then cloudy then rainy and cooler, and when you planned for a nice day and wear shorts, well, that stinks...
We launched the boat without any problem (so far so good this year!), but the problem of the boat launching area at the Pottapaug Pond is that it is surrounded with shallow waters...and...for the first time of the season, even though we were as careful as we usually are, the propeller took a hit :-( Nothing major (a little loss of speed) and Don will have to try straighten it out.
When you get on waters you have not fished for a long time, it's always diffcult deciding where to go, because you could have got lucky at on so many different spots. We had a good feeling about a point area that leads into shallow waters, so we decided to start there:
Even though it's still early Spring, the water is already warming up and fish are starting to hit lures, so we grabbed our spinnerbaits and joined perch rapala crankbaits:
These are great lures, we have caught quite a few fish with it. Don actually fished with the Perch lure and I had a gold spinnerbait on. After a few casts, it seemed that we were at the right spot: fish were hitting like crazy. I decided to move to a lizard, my favorite plastic lure.
Finally, I got a fish specie Don has not yet caught this season! Remember, Don has caught the first trout, the first smallmouth, the first laker....where would he stop? Well, right there, right now! It felt really good, believe me!
That largemouth grabbed the lizard while it was resting at the bottom of shallow waters. That's really the trick when fishing with a lizard, give it some really slow action and let the the bass feed as slowly as they want!
This was the beginning of a crazy 3 hours! Don and I probably caught 20 to 25 fish, from all sizes, but Don really caught most of them and many different types... f3cd4d3cbbd73ebfdaea38648efba81c It was INSANE and really funny! I do not have pictures of all of them, but here are a few:
Wahoo! Even though the weather turned for the worse (showers, then rain, then cold, then rainsuits on ;-)), I was Xtremely happy to catch another decent 2lb largemouth:
We were fishing a very nice area, around 5 to 7 feet deep, lots of coverage for bass and the lizard was doing a great job. Don finally switched to it and...BING! Here is a picture of his 1.75lb largemouth:
At that point of time, we both hated the weatherman. It was really cold and showers turned to somewhat heavy rain, basically not the conditions that were planned the night before. Hey I don't want to be a bad mouth on weathermen, but man, how can you plan a sunny 70 degrees weather when it rains straight for 4 hours!!
We decided to leave the area where we had great success (ok, my fault!) to reach a different area of the lake. Well, unfortunately, we did not succeed on that strategy. We caught a few pickerels (again! By that time of the day we probably had caught like 30 to 35 of them!) and...a snapping turtle - well, I did! I was retrieving my line, fishing with my lizard when I felt I hit something...
The turtle was swimming in shallow water and my not-so-weedless-anymore lizard got stuck on the right front leg of the turtle. Don't worry, the hook did not get deep at all, it seems to me that the snapping turtle's skin is like thick leather (sorry I have no experience with snapping turtles :-))...thing is, the turtle was swimming away from us, so I could not easily use the pliers to free her! Don alerted me like 3 times that the snapping turtle has the ability to expand its neck quite much and could bite me: well it tried and it FAILED! Close enough...but there is a good end to that story: she was freed and swam away.
Not bad at all, we caught 4 largemouth bass, with 3 keepers, around 30 pickerels, pumpkin seeds, crapies, white bass...a snapping turtle! Well, is that not a list!
What about next week? If the weather holds on (I won't trust the weatherman this time), we'll fish at Quaboag in West Brookfield
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