After the great fishing Alex Esmeraldo & I had on Sunday morning, we felt the air go out of our balloon as the bite virtually died after about 10:30. I know some pretty good fishermen who’ve been on the water since then. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and to a man, they did lousy.
The story’s the same. Lots of fish on the electronics, but precious little in the way of action.
Somethin’ just ain’t right.
The other Alex — Wetherell — had the heaviest catch of the week. But it’s wasn’t much fun.
Alex Wetherell with the biggest catch from the Housy this week
Alex & I shared a much better day on the river today, but to be honest, if we hadn’t gotten out early we might not have caught all that much. We were on the water just after 7AM, and didn’t see another boat until almost 8, and after that one it was closer to 9 when a few more started to show up. Most were bass boats headed-who-knows-where at 65 or 70, driving right over the fish that were biting, in a hurry to get to fish that might not even be there when they got to wherever. Our bite started to diminish about 10, and pretty much fizzled out after 10:30. In fact, I think we might’ve only caught one or two between 10:30 and 11:30, when we decided to pack it in for the weekend.
The best bite — not in terms of numbers, but size — was within the first half-hour or so on the water.
29 inch striper with an amazing girth.
10 minutes later, I had a good one too. A few inches shorter, but a whole lot fatter. I lost another big one and Alex got a couple quality fish in the 24 to 26 inch range, and we each had a couple “regular size” schoolies before we lost contact with the school and had to go looking again around 8AM.
Found another bunch within about 8 or 9 minutes, and sat on them enjoying pretty much non-stop action until the bite started to peter out around 10:15. Lot of smaller fish here, but we both like to set the hook as close to every cast as we can, and we did do that, and Alex got a couple good ones mixed in as well. By the time we decided to go looking for another bunch of fish, we’d run the C&R total up to between 80 and 100 fish between us.
Got a fish here and a fish there, but never really found much worth spending time on after that, and had the boat on the trailer, headed for home by 11:40. Sure am glad we got up and out after ‘em early!
A handful of our fish today came on the Chandelierious™. Note that only one bait -- the one the fish bit -- has a hook.
But maybe it was us.
In the wake of the snowmelt and the rains Thursday and Friday, the Housy had some color to it. But the weather was mild (upper twenties to low forties) with no wind to speak of. I though we would have done better. But Steve & I had all we could do to put 2 dozen fish in the boat between us.
But maybe it was us.
Alex was in sight most of the day, and he had a bent rod almost every time one of us looked at him. We had to stop looking because it was too frustrating.
Like I said — maybe it was us.
I did have a big fish on, but it broke off. I think I must’ve had a ding in my braid. I was pulling hard, but not that hard.
Tony was a long time friend. We met in the early 80s when we both worked on a book project for the Hunting and Fishing Library, and became close friends, fishing together when possible, and sharing our homes whenever either of us visited the other. The last few years, we kept talking about getting together for a few days on the water again, as we’d let too long a time pass by since our last trip to Priest. But predictably, something always interfered. One or the other of us always had some project or some commitment that kept us from setting aside a few measly days to catch up and enjoy each others’ company on the water. Yesterday’s news came as a sobering reminder to not let anything get in the way of getting together with old friends, because you just never know if you’ll ever have the chance again.
Took a ride this morning to see if there was any way we could get out. This is the Derby boat ramp. Not nearly as much snow there as at home (6″ as opposed to 10-plus) but still unusable. lots of footprints — animal and human alike — leading down the snow covered ramp, but no way I’m going to try taking a trailer in and out there.
Took a ride to check out the Sunnyside ramp in Shelton, and — you’ll note I couldn’t even get close enough to take a picture. The hill from the school to the ramp hasn’t been plowed. Just a couple sets of 4wd tracks. I didn’t even chance going down the hill.
Bummer.
But the next few days are supposed to be unseasonably warm (50s and upper 40s) so enough of this crap may be gone by next weekend to get us fishing again. I hope I hope I hope.
Hey, last season we were 3 weeks in to our 6 consecutive weeks of freeze out at this time, so this is still a bit improvement, isn’t it?
It’s 11:30 on Saturday morning, and we’re eight or nine inches into the predicted 3 to 4 inch snowfall. It’s snowing even harder now than earlier.
Damn.
Until last night, I had hoped to be able to get on the river today. Hah!
Steve & I still have tentative plans to get out tomorrow. This keeps up another few hours, and we can just change the name from tentative plans to pipe dreams.
Last weekend’s nice weather drew 35 to 40 boats to the housy on Saturday. Today it was 15 degrees colder. I think the total boats on the river for the day was 6 and never more than 4 at a time.
The fish still weren’t really chewing, but they were at least a little active. Steve & I got somewhere close to 60 between us in about 7 hours on the water. Not the greatest numbers, but we did kick some tail size-wise, with 5 or 6 keeper sized fish between 28 and 33, and at least another dozen in the 25 to 27 inch range, including one that might’ve been the fattest sub-legal striper I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t quite 27 inches, but this thing probably weighed 14 pounds!
Steve really got the hang of the single hook chandelier rig today, and probably took 2/3 of his fish on it, including 3 consecutive keepers on 3 consecutive casts at one point.
Overall, it was a good day; Probably the best of 2012 so far. We got the run of the river and never had to fish in a crowd. Heck there was no crowd to fish in. Thanks weathermen! The fish could have bitten a bit better, but when we’re getting the size we did today, that’s a fair trade-off in my book.
Strange day on the water Saturday. Alex & I got out early, and fished until a bit after 10. Alex had to leave by 11 for a family commitment. The fact that he left closer to 10 than 11 kind of hints at how good the fishing was.
When Alex left, I think I had 12 fish and he had 10 or so, We got a few fishing “normal” in the early morning. By normal, I mean casting and retrieving plastics (Fin-s Fish/Super Fluke etc) on 1/2 oz jigheads. But I got 5 of my first dozen on the chandelier, and Alex got 4 or 5 of his 10 suspending the bait motionless (or as motionless as you can actually hold it in a boat) a foot or two above bottom, directly under the boat.
When Alex left, I had prearranged to I jumped in Steve’s boat and fish with him until about 3pm. Both of the ‘trick’ presentations that paid off in the morning would prove to be important for the rest of the day. Especially the Chandelier. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The next several hours was a slow pick, and a vertical approach, holding the bait a few feet above bottom with almost no jigging applied, proved to be the most productive (or would it be more accurate to say “least unproductive?”) technique for us.
Other than a short and fruitless trip back up river to try to find some fish that didn’t have 30 boats sitting on top of them, at no time did we not have a massive school of fish under us. But not a school of biting fish.
I’m trying to get a handle on the way the fish are holding in the river, in relation to the slow bite we’ve been experiencing. Lately, and surely yesterday, the big aggregation seems to be vertically compressed, and horizontally expanded. Instead of a 15 to 20 foot thick solid band of fish covering several acres of water, we’re dealing with a 5 to 8 foot thick band of fish covering many, many acres of water. And instead of some separation between that thick cloud of fish and the bottom of the river, the fish seem to be holding pretty much in contact with the bottom.
Historically, the best fishing — the easy, hundred or two-hundred fish days — has taken place when the fish appeared on the electronics either in smaller (area-wise) but thicker (15 to 20 foot thick) bands of fish, or when the top of a band of fish was closer to the surface than the bottom of the fish layer was to the bottom of the river, or when the fish get up on the shelves along the river banks rather than holding out in the channel.
Steve — along with, I’d guess a lot of the other old hands at the winter striper game — believes that the sheer number of boats pressuring the fish these days is what’s pushing them down and turning them off. That may be true. But I believe that as long as the weather stays relatively mild, most of the feeding is taking place at night, and those big, “squished” schools near bottom are just in resting mode. And with that in mind, I think there’s something about the “school of bait” image that a chandelier or umbrella rig creates, that seems to trigger a resting fish’s predatory instincts a bit more than a single baitfish might.
Through the rest of the morning and early afternoon, I would occasionally put down the standard stuff and throw a chandelier a few times. And on a few occasions, I got a fish within a few casts of doing so. But that didn’t turn into any kind of a run or even just a couple fish in a row. At least not until around 2 pm. That’s when I went off on a run that seemed of major proportions, given how slow the fishing had been all day. Seventeen stripers, including a few really good “near keepers”, in about 45 minutes. All fishing the chandelier in a dead slow, swing bite fashion — throwing it cross current and letting the tide roll it down river as I retrieved it a slowly as possible. Most of the hits came at the turn — when the rig reached as far down river as the line allowed, and turned back up river and started moving ever-so-slowly into the current. And all this took place right in the middle of the biggest crowd of boats on the river.
Obviously the fish turned on a bit when the current really got rolling about 3 hours into the outgoing tide. But there wasn’t a whole lot of hook setting going on other than in the handful of boats throwing ‘bama rig variations and the guys trolling full scale umbrellas dressed with a dozen or more baits.
The last time I fished my variation of the ‘bama rig more than a few casts was a day that the fish were pretty active. It seemed to me that made a more noticeable commotion in the water than a single jig & plastic, and drew fish up from 15 feet down to within 4 or 5 feet of the surface to hit it. This weekend, the fish weren’t nearly as aggressive, and that’s exactly the conditions where I hoped it would shine. It did.
My variation of the rig is a lot closer to an Alabama rig than a traditional salt water umbrella rig. But it’s a whole lot different than the original ‘bama rig, or the multitude of commercially available copies of that rig that are now available. If your interested, you can get the details on my chandelerious rig here.
Mid-forties, virtually no wind, mostly cloudy and 40 degree water temp. If I had to design the perfect day for winter schoolies, today would have been close. That’s why it’s so tough to get a handle on why the fish didn’t want to chew today. Alex & I went out from about 8 until 2, and might have gotten 60 between us. Unfortunately, I only caught 21 of that total. And only 2 after 12 noon.
Twenty-one fish in 6 hours — or sixty between the two of us — might not seem like a bad day to some, I guess. But we know better. We were on fish pretty much all day, but except for a couple semi-flurries, they were mostly disinterested. About the only ones we saw catching fish with anything resembling consistency were the guys trolling umbrella rigs, and they weren’t exactly going gangbusters.
Productive or not, there is no situation in which I could see myself trolling umbrellas. I get zero enjoyment or satisfaction from catching a fish trolling, and if there’s a hook in more than one of the baits on that umbrella, it offends my sense of sportsmanship, as well. Still they had me wishing I hadn’t left my single hook chandelier sitting on the bench next to the computer this morning. It would have been interesting to see if the gang-bait presentation would have drawn strikes on the cast and retrieve where a single bait was having trouble attracting any interest at all.
Still the most notable thing about today was the overall lack of activity on the part of the fish, given the weather and water conditions. Alex had been out on Friday, and said it wasn’t much better then. Despite the fact that they’ve barely been in the river a month, Alex suggested that it felt like February fishing. He might have a point there. That’s when we expect to find big schools of fish that rarely want to bite. Not December!
I’ve got a feeling that the fish may be doing the bulk of their feeding at night, but I’m not about to head out all night to find out. That boat sailed a long time ago for me.
Not sure whether I’ll get out tomorrow or not. Even if I do, it’ll be a new year. According to my log, I finished 2011 with 1697 stripers. Just under 500 of them have come out of the Housy since first contact in October. That’s a far cry from 2010′s October to the end of the year catch, which was over 1500! Then again, last year’s great fall was followed by a frozen January and a lackluster February. Maybe this year the mid-winter bite will shine.
Alex & I hit the river for what we knew would be an abbreviated trip this morning. Probably could have abbreviated it a bit more than we did, but you know how it goes. We wanted to be on the trailer and headed home by noon, and we were. Problem was, if we had left at 10:30 instead of noon, we would have caught nearly as many fish.
First thing in the morning, it was calm and way warmer than had been predicted. And the fishing was great, other than the fact that you really had to stay alert and keep moving to stay with the fish. Alex did a pretty good job of keeping us in contact, and we were hooked up pretty much non stop early on. Eventually, we got a pretty good bunch cornered, and were able to I-Pilot Spot Lock on them for a bit longer than how long it takes to catch a half-dozen or so.
The unfortunate part of being “on them” for an extended period, is that it really increases the number of guys out there fishing the bent rod pattern who make you (or the mother lode they assume you’re casting to) the target of their “adjustments”, so after an hour or so, we saw our fish get drifted over, driven by, driven over and cast to, way too often for the school not to bust up and get skittish.
And so we were back on the move, looking and probing. Trying to find a bunch that wasn’t as near the main crowds. That’s about when the wind started to pick up and the apparent temperature started to plummet, and the bite got a bit harder to pin down. After 70-some-odd apiece between 7:30 and 10, we went to 20 or 30 between us between 10 and 11:40 or so.
Overall, a good morning, though. Here’s some animated fish porn from before the wind came up and the crowds came out. (actually, it wasn’t that crowded today. It just seemed like 7 or 8 of the 10 or 12 boats that were out by late morning, always seemed to want to be fishing on top of us.)
I just went online and printed out my 2012 CT Inland Fishing License and Marine Fishing License. It’s free for old geezers ahem! Senior Citizens like me.
I like senior discounts, and am not the least bit embarrassed to ask for them. But I never felt like a senior until pretty recently. Now, I do. And I sure wish other states extended free senior licensing to their non-resident license holders. New York, VT, NH and Maine, I’m talking to you, ya hear? I’m old no matter where I’m fishing, ain’t I?
Actually, I qualified for a free CT license last year, but didn’t get it. Not because I didn’t want to admit to being a senior. Because I’m stupid. Or because Connecticut is stupid. Or both. See, I didn’t qualify for the free license until the 17th of January last year, when I turned 65. But I sure didn’t want to miss out on the winter striper fishing the first two weeks of the year, and the only way to legally take advantage of it was to buy a license, which I would have gotten for free if I could just force myself to take those 1st 2 weekends off. No, I had to buy one.
This was the river on January 1 last year.
Ice came early and hard to the river last winter.
We didn’t get to fish again until February. So the license I bought instead of waiting two weeks for a “free” one didn’t get me a whole lot of fishing time.
But there’s more to my tale of woe about why I bought a license last season, when I could have gotten one for free a couple weeks later. There’s also the matter of the refund. Some may remember than in 2010, the legislature and the governor went crazy, and doubled the price of all permits and fees. Including fishing licenses. The public went crazy. Fishermen actually banded together and fought it tooth and nail. The State reversed its position on sporting licenses, retroactively.
Oh, they weren’t giving any actual money back. But you could get a credit back when you purchased your next year’s license. Of course no credits could be applied to a free license, so…
If memory serves (and that’s not as sure a thing as it was just a few years ago) my 2011 license and marine permit ended up costing me either $11 or $14. Or some other random figure. All I’m really sure of is that today, I FINALLY got to take advantage of Connecticut’s free fishing license for seniors. And I have to renew it every year. I guess that’s just in case I start getting younger some day, and no longer qualify for a freebie. More likely because legislators and bureaucrats can’t ever seem to take the common sense approach to anything, and have to make everything at least a little more of an ordeal than it really needs to be.
Put in another 4 hours on the river today. I managed 58 and Alex had about 80, I guess. Absolutely nothing like yesterday. Fish were smaller, fewer and tougher to elicit a bite from. Despite the fish we did catch, it really wasn’t a whole lot of fun out there this morning.
Lost weekend confirmed.
Derby boat ramp, 1/22
Took a ride to check out the Sunnyside ramp in Shelton, and — you’ll note I couldn’t even get close enough to take a picture. The hill from the school to the ramp hasn’t been plowed. Just a couple sets of 4wd tracks. I didn’t even chance going down the hill.
Bummer.
But the next few days are supposed to be unseasonably warm (50s and upper 40s) so enough of this crap may be gone by next weekend to get us fishing again. I hope I hope I hope.
Hey, last season we were 3 weeks in to our 6 consecutive weeks of freeze out at this time, so this is still a bit improvement, isn’t it?