Welcome Welcome to RichZ's Bass Blog. Thoughts and discussion of fishing related topics from Outdoor Writer/Educator, Rich Zaleski.
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Posted by RichZ on: 03/08/2010
Not sure what’s going on with the stripers there this year, but despite an improvement in conditions that we all expected would spur a pretty solid increase in fish activity, we ended up instead with just another tough weekend on the Housy. The electronics show too many fish, in too large schools to even begin to comprehend how many fish might be in the river. But for the most part, the fish in these massive schools seem to be suffering some type of eating apathy.
My son drove down from Vermont to fish with me this weekend. On Saturday, we caught 52 between us, and my buddy Jim joined us in the afternoon and added another dozen or so to the total catch for the day. By far, the hottest thing we had going most of the day was dead sticking a 4″ Fin-S Fish (Albino/Chartreuse Tail) a foot or two off bottom directly under the boat, in 25 to 27 feet of water. Those numbers might seem to some to contradict my claim of lousy fishing, but the counts are artificially high because we kind of beat hard on a bunch of much smaller fish we found that were a little less turned off.
On Sunday, we were off the water at mid-day, as Tom wanted to get home to Vermont during the daylight hours. Our numbers were 18, 12 and 13 for myself, Tom and Jim respectively. Not a great catch, but better than anyone else we spoke with during our day on the water. The deadstick approach still worked, but it had to be a bit higher in the water column, and the fish seemed a whole lot more responsive to a bigger, brighter bait than the day before. Sunday’s ‘hot ticket’ was a 5″ Fin-S Fish (Limetreuse), fished on a 1/2 ounce head.
All weekend, most of the relatively few fish that we caught on the cast, with the bait somewhere other than hanging straight down beneath the rod tip, hit the lure on the sink, before the retrieve had started. So except for those few suicide fish, they seemed to completely ignore any presentation that involved moving a lure horizontally through the water. And they weren’t all that interested in one moving vertically or sitting still either, if you must know the truth.
I’m giving these fish one more weekend to get their collective act together and start biting. If they aren’t active by next weekend, well, I’ll probably give them another, and another. But don’t tell them that, OK?
Posted by RichZ on: 02/28/2010
It certainly wasn’t like last weekend’s active fish, feeding in current, but it wasn’t terrible, like the last few weeks prior to that, either. The flood conditions following all the snow and snow melt the last 4 days had the water temps down a bit, and had the lethargic fish milling around in spots out of the direct current flow.
Jim & I found the fish well up river from last week’s hot locations, but with a slow bite, we couldn’t resist the urge to take a ride down river looking for more active fish, any way. That was probably a mistake, as we invested an hour in driving, looking and casting at a few very mobile and not very hungry pods of fish, with only one fish to show for it.
It didn’t take us long to decide to head back to the fish we’d left an hour earlier. They weren’t exactly on fire, but at least they were biting a little. We managed 53 between us in a half day on the water. For the most part, they were on the smaller side, although I did start the day with a solid keeper sized fish.
 Best fish of the day on the last day of February. We’ve finally gotten a less than stellar February out of the way, and from here on out, the fishing should get better and better for the next 6 weeks or so.
Posted by RichZ on: 02/21/2010
The fishing wasn’t quite as hot as it was yesterday, but Jim & I still managed to get 87 fish between us.
Jim got one about 29″, I had one over 30. It wouldn’t open its mouth so I grabbed the jig head and tried lifting it that way. Very bad idea. It shook, the jighead slipped, and the line popped. That would’ve been heartbreaking, but at least I got to touch it. Not so with an even bigger fish a little earlier. Jim couldn’t reach its mouth and tried to land it by grabbing its tail. He actually had it 3/4 of the way into the boat when it went berserk and ended up back in the drink. I’m going to have to seriously consider getting a big collapsible net that will fit in my rod box.
 Of course Jim didn't seem to be dropping any. Anyway, great weekend. It’s nice that the fish finally woke up.
Posted by RichZ on: 02/20/2010
Steve & I took advantage of the first warm weekend day in just about forever, and got out on the Housy. The weathermen were talking about a lot of wind, but to be honest, it never really got all that windy.
And finally, the fish started biting again. The water temp was up above 33 degrees for the first time in at least a month — maybe six weeks. And the fish really responded. Most of our fish came from 8 to 12 feet of water, and a lot of them came very high in the water column, too. We boated 135 between us, once we stopped fishing for the suspended fish we haven’t been having any luck with all winter, and got on some biters in shallower water.
We probably had a half-dozen keepers in the mix, with the best one being about 30 inches. But at least half our fish were in the 23 to 26 inch range, and no more than 3 or 4 were real runts. A good bite was definitely a long time coming this year, and it sure was great to get on it. I don’t much care for those smiley graphics that seem to litter some message boards, but if I did, I’d probably put a whole bunch of ‘em in today’s post. It was a very satisfying day out there today.
Posted by RichZ on: 02/18/2010
Sometimes it’s amazing what passes for a repair.
Click image for more.
Posted by RichZ on: 02/14/2010
With the milder temperatures over the past few days, I was somewhat shocked this morning to find the Housy skimmed over from just about the Derby ramp south. Sure, it was only skim ice, mostly 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick, and didn’t present an obstacle to our search for fish. But it did severely limit where we were able to get our lures in the water for the first few hours. View the entire post — Schoolies? Not so much.
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Hey weather guys — WTF?
With this storm that’s been skirting around us for the past few days and is projected to sit squarely atop us until tomorrow morning, I’ve been watching the weather forecasts very closely — hoping against hope that I’d have a good window of the kind of conditions I need to get the boat out of the yard and fish tomorrow and Sunday.
That having been said, no part on any of the forecasts made by the “professionals” involved the sun coming out any time today or tomorrow. But it’s glaring in my window as I type this. How about a big WTF for all the weather idjits. 9 gazillion dollars worth of computers and radar, and they can’t get it any more right than the farmer’s alamanac.