Opening Day... Trout? No thanks..

  After a long cold winter dreaming about smallies at the end of my line smashing jerk baits pulling drag and jumping 3 feet into the air, opening day this all became a reality once again. We headed up to the NW corner for our first of most likely a new annual trip for opening day. We were on the water by 8:45 and fished till 5 pm. Water temps were between 54 to 59 degrees which was pretty shocking but that also meant one thing. These smallmouth were going to be that much closer to spawning and there feed bags were gonna be on in full force. Once we found the hot spot it was lock n load for about 2 hours. We would get hit on at least every other cast. Probably missed a few dozen fish easy. By the time we left this spot we had 19 smallmouth all of which were over 14 inches and most had guts like i had never seen. True footballs! I caught all mine on the Dynamic Lures HDXXL jerk bait and Josh got all his on a Rapala Xrap. 

 After this hot start the water started to get a bit murky so we headed back down river into a back cove where i caught 2 pike and a calico. We also missed a few largemouth in there. The pike were 26 and 29 inches with the bigger one having multiple bites all over his body from fights with other males during spawn which by the looks of the injuries was probably in the last week. Was crazy to see a fish that beat up still feeding that aggressively.  We had a few short strikes from a couple other pike but then the action died. We made one more trip back up to where we found the smallmouth earlier and found the water to be higher faster and water clarity had turned to dog shit. Managed one more smallie each and then fished are way back to down with no more action after that.

 It was a fun opening day for sure... probably my favorite ever. Do i hate trout? Maybe i do.. to catch a fish that grew up in a concrete tank and is 70 % of the time the size of a dollar bill i just cant get into. But i get it for all the people who enjoy eating them. As a catch and release fisherman ill stick to my bass and my pike!

NW CT PIG by Mike O'Mara

 Yesterday Joeyartifact and i got a late start around noon. we found conditions far worse than we expected, with plenty of wind and a crisp northerly feel to the air. right from the start we found it to be a struggle, and for the first hour we had only one hit in an area previously loaded with quality fish. Joe hooked into a 4+ fish easy, but she threw the hook on a roll. we covered a lot of water, fishing points, bays and flats up to 12 feet deep, throwing everything from jerkbaits (the only thing that worked) jigs, spinner and chatterbaits, and a new reaction strike trout swimbait DSouth inspired me to order. i promptly snapped the first one off on a rod tangle, but fished it here and there in top areas. no takers, but i plan to try it out a lot.

 
 We managed 12 keepers, 9 shorts and 8 pickerel. lost a bunch of one-tap-and-gone fish. still, though the average was only about 1-1.5 pounds, we finally found the reason i took him to this place when joey reared back on his PB lake bass, a 5lb 10oz CHUNK of a bass!

By: Mike O'Mara   Obass from CTFisherman