Last Trip!

Yep, the Quabbin closes Saturday. For another year. Going to be tough, but we'll persevere. On the bright side, we will use the small boat to torment crappie in waters outside the reservoir, until ice up. Today, we launched a bit after 8 am with the air at a COLD 38 degrees, and the water just at 55. Breezes were thermal only until about 9 am when a light breeze from the south west kicked in.

On the way up to the launch, we saw a couple of deer feeding in a pasture:





What you don't see when you don't have a gun! The fall foliage is in full swing right about now. I thought you folks who do not experience this change would like to see these:





Really starting get pretty around here. But, it won't last long. Soon (2 months) the white stuff will start flying. UGH! Such is life for we New Englanders. Anyway, on the way out we passed this immature loon watching us without a care in the world:



She / it, followed us around for part of the morning. Good company. Today, Walt & I managed to catch & release 57 fish; 2 being bluegill and the rest our target, the crappie. A decent day, for sure. And the quality of the fish were better as well. Here are a few screen shots of the bait & fish we would pass over while side pulling jigs:







Whenever we saw the screen like these, we'd nail 2, 3, or 4 crappie at one time! Great fun. We pulled 1/16 & 1/8 oz. ball heads dressed with various plastics & colors. If you got your bait into a school, you'd get bit....period. Didn't seem to matter what kind, size or color it was. The were "on the bite". Probably that full "harvest" moon last night was the culprit? Probably not. We pulled our jigs along at between .7 & .9 mph according to the GPS, for what that's worth.

And we did not just side pull the main basin areas. We also spent time casting in the shallow coves, which produced well for us during our last trip here. Today....nada! Not even a bluegill. Everything was out deep once again. Go figure?

Finally, here are a few pictures of some of the fish we took. We had many doubles, a few triples and quads as well. A fun morning to spend on the water with an exceptional fishing partner. Here's some pictures of today's catches:















A fine close to the Quabbin Reservoir's open water season. We'll not be hitting various ponds and lakes around our area, which hopefully will not be pressured too heavily by the boaters and other fishermen. We'll see. Hope you all had a great Columbus Day weekend. God Bless America!