It was the best of times and the worst of times

I had a good/bad weekend about 3 weeks ago. I went fishing on the Millstone river with Lance on Sat. We walked down to a spot a I know that is mostly unfished. When we got there I was tossing a lure towards a good looking area under some branches using my 3 piece light action. I snagged a branch and while trying to tug it free I broke the tip of the middle section where the top section connects to. I thought I had fixed it but while Lance was fighting a real nice catfish I had a hit and when I tried to reel it in the section broke again so I had to reel in the (luckily for me) small catfish that I had hooked while holding the pole together. I couldn't fix the pole too much of the center section had broken. Lance did land the catfish though and it was 4 3/4 pounds a very nice fish for light tackle.

That was the bad part of Sat, for me anyway, Lance had a great time lol. Sunday my wife and I went fishing. We decided to try Duhernal from the shore since it looked like rain and we didn't want to get caught out on the water in the canoe if a thunderstorm came along. We did not do well there, we each caught one fish. I decided we'd try 2 ponds I hadn't fished in 5-6 years. It was raining by this time and while I was fairly dry since I was wearing a rain jacket Tammy was wearing a wind breaker that was soaked.

When we got down to the ponds I gave her my rain jacket and grabbed her soaking wet windbreaker. We tried the deeper of the 2 ponds first and it looked real nice. When I had fished there before the water was very cloudy but I had still caught some nice bass in it. Now it was clear and the bass were very active. Unfortunately they were also very small. They were strong little buggers but not one was over half a pound. Rather then fish another part of that pond we went over to the other pond where I had once caught a bass that was easily over 4 pounds and probably close to 5 pounds. We started catching bigger fish and they were also very strong fish. We didn't bring the camera with us so there are no pictures but I caught 12 bass the biggest being 3.5 pounds. Tammy caught 4 bass the biggest about 1.5 pounds. Tammy had to drag me off the water because it was getting dark and I was by then soaking wet and starting to shiver. These ponds are definitely getting fished again!

Tammy and Dad fishing

Tammy and my dad got out yesterday for fishing. They went to a couple of lakes and got some bass. I'm hoping to get out tomorrow morning and go to Noname lake myself.

My birthday on the Delaware

It was my birthday last Thurs and I took the day off from work to go fishing. My friend Lance was on vacation so we decided to go to the Delaware river. It had rained pretty heavily the night before and the water was pretty heavily stained, basically only a couple shades short of being chocolate milk. The fishing was pretty disappointing. Lance caught one smallmouth that was not very big. I caught 2 channel cats also not that big. I caught off of a spinner so that was pretty cool. The fishing was bad but it was a great day for finding things. Lance and I were fishing a channel between 2 small islands, we were walking down the shoreline of the larger island just stopping to cast every 10 or 20 feet. Lance had stopped to make a few cats so I walked by him. About 20 feet past him I saw a small plastic bag on sure,. I saw something in so I bent to pick it up. The "something" turned out to be $63! That alone would have made the trip worthwhile but more was to come.

We stopped a couple of hundred yards further down and just threw our lines out and sat down to relax for a while. For laughs we started trying to chip rocks into arrowheads or spearheads. I picked up one rock and it turned out to have some fossil imprints of seashells. This was turning out to be a fun little trip! In about the same area we saw a bald eagle. It was the first one Lance had ever seen and only about the 2nd one I had ever seen. as we started to walk down the shoreline again. By this time I was keeping my eyes open. A good thing I was because this time I found a fishing reel! It was an Abu-Garcia reel. It wasn't a very high quality one but it was in almost perfect shape. By this time Lance and I had realized that this had turned from a simple fishing trip into one of our patented adventures.

A small digression here. Lance and I have a habit of having adventures. They aren't always good adventures though. We define an adventure as something that happens way out of the norm. Just getting lost going to a new fishing spot isn't good enough we have to get lost in a big such as winding up in the wrong county, wrong state or winding up in an area that looks as though they shot Deliverance there. Just being caught in a downpour isn't enough either. Being caught in a thunderstorm while in the middle of the river and then having to climb a 15 foot vertical wall to get out does qualify. Lance also getting poison ivy was just icing on the cake.

Okay, back to our latest adventure. After getting down to the end of the island we realized that to get back to the other end we'd have to A) walk upriver on slippery rocks with a strong current to fight. B) walk up the other side of the island through deeper water with a muddy bottom. Or C) cut overland through some very dense vegetation. We took option C since while being more painful at least didn't have the option of getting banged around by the river or finding deep mud. We found a game trail so it wasn't too nasty. We also found a small campground someone had made. It was pretty cool they had a small tent, a couple of chairs and grill setup as well as a fence made of branches. The thing that caught our eye however was the dead bird hanging from a tree. It looked an Osprey. I hope they found it dead and didn't kill it otherwise they are scumbags. After seeing that we decided it would a bad idea to look inside the tent. As Lance put it we'd either see a guy gap toothed guy with a shotgun or a dead body and neither option sounded good so we just left.

Aside from that bit of weirdness it was a very good day. I just hope next time we go to that spot the fishing is better.

Fun on the Millstone

My wife, my son David and I went to the Millstone River in Rocky Hill last week. My wife and I were very pleasantly surprised at how well he behaved. We were there for 4 hours and he behaved very well overall. My wife even managed to catch a catfish. It was a weird looking channel catfish with a huge head and small body. If the body had matched the head it would have been easily a 5 pound fish. With the small body it was only about 3 pounds. The fun part was getting her to hold it. She only has one glove for holding fish and she needed both hands. After half begging her and half yelling at her I finally got these 2 pictures. She's going to kill me for posting one of them. I think you'll all figure out which one I'm talking about. I'm also posting some pictures of David wading around in some shallow water. It took a little time for him to go in the water but once I did he loved it. This was a week or so before we all went down there. I was looking for some baby crayfish to put in my fish tank. I found 2 baby crayfish and I also caught to baby catfish. One the catfish are big enough I'll put them in the main tank. Right now they are so small they'd get eaten.

They went to Lake Champlain and all I got were these pictures

My parents went to Lake Champlain last week with my Uncle Rick and Uncle Joe. As you can see from the pictures they had a good trip. Especially my Uncle Rick. I'd would have loved to have seen the weight on the big bass he got. I'd say it was around 5- 5 1/2 pounds.




The picture of the bass being held by someone with a hairy arm is my Uncle Joe I'm pretty sure. He was the only one wearing a watch strap like that nice fish though. The smallmouth might be my favorite of the trip though. Catching a smallie that size would be a good fight with a bass rig let alone a fly rod.


The other picture of an arm with a fish is from my dad. I know he caught more then that. I'll have to get more pictures from him.

Last but not least my mom had a good trip it looks like. The largemouth bass was nice mom but Tammy and I were more impressed with that monster rockbass. That's about the biggest one I've ever seen.

Lance and I on the Delaware

My friend Lance and I made our first trip to the Delaware 2 weeks ago. We had fun but didn't really start getting into decent fish until early evening. We did find a kayak in a pile of flood debris but it was too damaged to bother keeping. The debris piles were very impressive though. We had to climb 15-20 feet just to get to the top of them.

First canoe trip of the year

My wife and I finaly got our canoe on the water 2 weeks ago. We made a beeline for our favorite lake and after not finding any decent fish in our usual spots we tried some areas that later on in the year will be covered with weeds. I was trying rubber worms, spinnerbaits and chatterbaits and only getting small bass and pickerel. I noticed my wife was getting a ton of hits from a Johnson's Silver Minnow and I started to reach for one. At the last second I grabbed a Berkley Frenzy spoon instead since it has a rubber minnow trailer. It was a good choice all of the bass you see I caught off of it. My wife only landed this one big pickerel but she was getting so many hits from smaller pickerel that she was going cray. We also saw a lot of what we call torpedoes. They are big fish we spook in very shallow water that take off and leave a mud trail and an enormous wake.

Not all fun and games

My son seems to have picked up my total disregard for weather when fishing. He and I were going back down to the Millstone River in Rocky Hill when it started to rain. When we pulled into the parking lot it was still raining. When a small break in the clouds appeared I asked him if he still wanted to fishing. His immediate reply was yes. I think the pictures will speak for themselves.

David at the Millstone

Besides the Delaware River I've also started taking my son to the Millstone River in Rocky Hill since it's closer and a much safer river. The first time we went down I brought my ultra light just to play with sunnies. I found a little spot where I was catching them with almost every cast. I kept asking David if he wanted to try but he kept saying it's Daddy's turn. Finally I cast out the little spinner I was using and handed him the pole. A decent sized litte sunny hit and he reeled it all the way in. The fishing bug is slowly starting to bite him I think.

My son and I on the Delaware

I've taken my son down to the Delaware a couple of times this year not so much to fish but get him used to it. He loves it and is always asking to go to the "Delaware"

January fishing

Yes I know it's June, I've gotten a bit lazy about updating this blog. My wife and I went out fishing back in January it was our first trip of the year. We didn't get anything big and mostly got pickerel.