The Ponds; 7/15/20

Hey Guys,

It's been like forever since Walt & I have gone fishing and posted anything! Last time we got to wet a line in a boat was back in early March! Since "things" have been settling down a bit here in New England, we decided to get together and do some fishing! We've been to the range to do some shooting, but fishing nada.

We launched around 7:30 am at a small series of ponds in Westfield. Water temp was close to 80 degrees with the air in the mid 70's. This is one of the few recent days that hasn't been exceptionally hot & humid.....or raining. This is what the day shaped up looking like from our 12 footer:

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We started off casting the shallows.....followed by chasing around surfacing bait balls. Using straight tails, curly tails, paddle tails (Walt forget the grenades....again!) We planned on doing some side pulling, but alas, for whatever reason, the electric motor wouldn't work for us! Not sure what the problem is yet. Re-charging the main battery right now as I type this. Will try a few other things as well.

In any case, here are a few screen shots of some of the bait and/or fish we marked today:

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Some pretty interesting stuff for sure. Did we slay 'em? I'm afraid not quite. We had a decent day and pulled off around 11:00 am after our casting arms wore out (not being able to side pull). Tally for the day was 37 fish between us; 12 of our target species - the crappie. Followed by 17 bluegill and 8 small largemouths. Lots of bait and fish on the surface today. This was one of the best crappie of the day that Walt nailed over deep water:

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Pretty decent fish! Hopefully we'll get the TM issues resolved and get up the Quabbin for some "real" fishing. It sure did feel GOOD getting out on the water. BTW, we had several fly-overs from an osprey, which eventually dove and snatched a fish off the surface. Sorry, I wasn't fast enough with the camera.

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All right, you guys are back in business finally! And a good day it was, too. Hopefully, you can make up for some lost time and get out there 2-3 times a week for the next couple of months.
And get back to posting; trying to keep the NE board active is wearing me out! :Rofl

Great to see you guys back at it. A good first time back out also. Keep it up.

Great story, beautiful pictures. Thanks for sharing.