Saturday, 7/3
I joined Steve and Dave heading out of the Connecticut River for stripers, with a backup plan of fishing for fluke if the stripers weren’t hot. A couple schoolies on a jerkbait before leaving the river, then we each got a decent one early when we found them pushing bait under birds on a reef off Clinton. The bass action died pretty quickly as the sun got higher and more-and-more boats started racing up to them every time they surfaced. We spent the rest of the tide drifting heavy jigs for fluke.
Normally, I’m pretty good with a jig, but I was humbled on Saturday. Dave’s no slouch either, and he too was left wondering what Steve was doing different than us. Between Dave & I, we boated maybe 25 fluke. Meanwhile, Steve had 45.
With the stripers pretty much gone from the rivers, it was no problem deciding on a return to my fresh water comfort zone for Sunday’s fishing.
Sunday, 7/4
My buddy Jim & I started with a visit to the upper Housy, ostensibly for smallies. The plan was to fish that for a couple hours, then shift over to Lakeville after the ramp opened there at 7AM. To put it bluntly, the 90 minutes we spent on the Housy would have been better invested sleeping a little later. The river was oddly high, off colored, cold (66 to 68 degrees) and current was almost nil. I caught a lone rock bass. Jim caught a short smallie and a snapping turtle. We were on our way to Lakeville by 6:55.
On the water at Lakeville by 7:30, and stayed until almost 6.
Water temp was 74 most everywhere early, and 76 to 78 under the hot sun by afternoon. Air temps in the upper nineties. There was about a 45 minute period around noon that the wind blew about 10 to 12 mph out of the WNW, but other than that it was pretty much dead calm. Water was extremely clear. Most of the offshore vegetation was in full ‘friar tuck mode’ (big bald spot on top of the hump with a ring of veggies around it) due to recent weed cutting activity.
With the exception of one shallow shoreline shelf we got hot on during the brief period of cloud cover mid-to-late afternoon, most of our fish came from deeper water, outside the weeds. When the cloud cover turned on the shallows it was definitely an Ozmo/TitlesHOT bite, and it seemed like a weight light enough to not penetrate the weeds, and to flutter down slowly into pockets and openings. The deep bite on the other hand, was all drop shot, and all motor oil.
We ended the day with 28 bass between us. Biggest was around 3-1/2#. Didn’t keep an accurate count of the pickerel, but conservatively, we caught over 50 of Lakeville’s Lake Snakes, with most going around 3#. I had two giant toothies over 5#, including a 5-7. As usual the biggest toothies came out of deep water on the drop shot.
While I held an edge in the bass tally and a huge margin in the pickerel tally, Jim was species champ for the day, counting largemouth, smallmouth, yellow perch, sunfish, rock bass, pickerel and a snapping turtle among his catches for the day, beating me by a smallie, a yellow and a snapper. Of course species count aside, it was bass we were after. Here’s a few for today’s catch.
Monday, 7/5
Stay home and rest. Maybe go see the grandkids.
Question:
Under the BB (brilliant blue), were the shallow bass not there, buried, or just too spooky. Following…How deep were your deep fish? Do you think light was attenuated enough to provide for a good bite, or were they just less spooked by boat and presentation?
I ask bc I have often seen shallow bass “out and about” under bright sun, but just too spooky to get a bait to. Then again, I’ve seen em buried. Always wondered what role there activity vs ours (presentation spooking em), plays.
Spooking/activity was not really an issue on the waterbody, Paul. It’s got a 10 horse limit, and I could count the # of boats out fishing the lake yesterday on 3 fingers. Plus a couple trout trollers.
The lake gets ‘mowed’ every weekday during the summer, so the weed growth is a little weird. there’s a band of lush vegetation from 6 or 7 feet on down the drop into 18 feet. Areas shallower than that get ‘scalped’ and don’t grow back as quickly. The fish I got shallow were from the patchy growth behind the band of thicker stuff that starts to recover and reach for the surface again much faster.
Exploratory casts to the shallower areas earlier in the day (and later, after the clouds moved through) proved fruitless. Even under the (rather light) cloud cover, I didn’t give the shallows all that much thought. But there’s one deadfall that reaches into a few feet of water, way back across one of the ‘scalped’ flats, and I went out of my way to hit it. On a random cast to a weed clump as I crossed the flat, I caught a fish. Caught another off the tree, and then another off a weed clump as I made my way back out to the drop. I may be slow to go shallow, but I’m not an idiot. I stuck with the scattered stuff and followed the flat around that corner of the lake, until the clouds disappeared and I went 20 minutes or so without anything but a rock bass bite or two.
I’ve got to suspect that they were buried in the thicker band of weeds on the drop-off during the brighter skies, because a friend of mine and his boy were in one of the other 2 boats, and they stuck with flipping the 8 to 10 foot band of dense weeds, and did about was well number-wise.
The milfoil grows out to 18 to 20 feet, the few areas of broadleaf pondweed reach a little deeper, and there’s clingy sand grass out to about 25 or so. Generally speaking there’s about a 3 foot depth separation between the big pickerel and the deep bass (with the toothies being deeper than the bass) but yesterday, the deep bass seemed a little deeper than normal, and the big pickerel a little shallower, so you had to put up with the toothies to catch the bass, with 20 to 22 feet being the key depth for me yesterday.
Thanks for the details, Rich.