Another Reservoir Trip

Yesterday, my fishing partner Walt & myself, hit the Quabbin Res again for crappie. Wind wasn't blowing as much as we'd like. Only 5 - 10 mph. We'd much prefer 10 - 20 mph for our "speed drifting" technique, but what are you going to do! We managed between 50 - 60 crappie & bluegil, with one lone yellow perch.

We drifted with 1/16 & 1/8 oz. ball head jigs (#4 barbless hooks) with a variety of plastics on the tail end. Most successful were the BG Baby Shads, catching 3 to 1 over the other plastics we tried. We had rods (2 ea.) set up with the straight tails, tubes & curly tails on these drifts. Tubes came in second and the curly tails just were not producing very well. Probably due to the lack of drift speed. Also of note that the 1/8 oz. ball heads produced more than the 1/16 oz. heads, over 22' of water. With the breezes as light as they were, chances are the crappie kept lower in the water column. Never got a chance to wet the paddle tails (I like the Zoom 2" paddletail shad shape grubs), because I figured the slow drift would not give the tail enough action.

Here's some pics of our day:

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All in all, a decent day with all fish released. We some at boatside, but landed the majority. Broke off only 2 fish on the 2# test mono leader, ahead of the 2# test Fireline braid. No knot failures occurred with the Alberto connecting the two.

EDIT: If the thunderstorms hold off tomorrow, we'll give it another whirl! Will keep you posted. :)

great picks

great trip and pics! thanks for sharing.

Nice catch guys

Love this kind of report, story and pictures.
"gene"

Great report, please tell us more or pict of your jig set up I would like to try this on lake I fish, seems wind is always 10 to 15 mph when I am able to go fishing.

Very nice. Keep it up and good fishing.

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Originally Posted by jaxsprat

Great report, please tell us more or pict of your jig set up I would like to try this on lake I fish, seems wind is always 10 to 15 mph when I am able to go fishing.

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I have outlined our presentation in previous posts here, but suffice to say that here in MA, we are extremely limited in the "hows" of our presentations. That is, we are limited to only two hooks/baits per fisherman. One bait on each of two rods per angler, or two baits on one rod. It's just how the law is written. Spider rigging is totally out of the question, so we've had to improvise. And apparently it's been working well for us.

"Speed drifting" allows us to cover a lot of water fast. And the crappie up here don't mind a bit! One day we were "flying" over the lake with a 20 mph wind and whitecaps. Our jigs were no more than a foot or two below the surface and the crappie went wild. That was a "100" day easily, probably more. And we're fishing over the main lake basin of 22 fow. The water is tanic brown stained with vis down to about 6' in this colored water. Again, the crappie don't seem to mind one bit. Neither do the bluegill for that matter. And we usually manage to land a yellow perch or two on each trip.

As far as the jig set up we are using, it's plain & simple. Using two rods each, we put on a 1/16 oz. jig on one and a 1/8 oz. on the other. This gives us variation in depth control on each drift. The jigs we mold up are with both #4's & #6's. The choice being how deep the fish are taking the jig. if they are taking it deep, we go up to the #4s....if lip hooking, we'll go down to the #6s to get more in the mouth. And depending on the number of "takes" on either size jig, we might double up on one size or the other. Just about any plastic will work, but I find that the straight tails are just flat out out-performing all other types. We've tried them all!

Line is very important to us as well. We use both 2# test and 4# test Fireline. Again, to afford us the greatest variety of depth control. (Line dia. = water resistance = depth) I prefer the 2# test myself, but I also use a 5 - 6 foot mono leader to act as a shock absorber. The strikes on this fine diameter braid is totally "electric" and quite dramatic, so you need a shock leader.

Hope this answers some of your questions. :)

Nice catch! I have always wanted to fish Quabbin. Looks like a nice body of water.
I do have a couple of questions if you don't mind. Do they still rent boats there? How is the smallmouth fishing there?

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Originally Posted by BigEdCT

Nice catch! I have always wanted to fish Quabbin. Looks like a nice body of water.
I do have a couple of questions if you don't mind. Do they still rent boats there? How is the smallmouth fishing there?

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Yes, they do rent boats with & without motors. The off-shore smallmouth fishing is decent. Not as great as it use to be 5 years ago or so, but you can still have a 10 - 15 fish day there, if you hit it right. This summer has been tough though, mainly because of all the wind & rain we've been getting. Which is why we've been targeting crappie lately - closer to the launch ramps to get us off in a jiff and the crappie love windy conditions! :)