Report; 9/25/20

Walt & I hit the Quabbin again today. It's been terribly windy the past couple of days, which is why we held off until today. They predicted calm winds, picking up a bit in the afternoon. When we launched around 8 am, the water temp was 62 degrees, down 6 degrees since our last trip already. We've been experiencing VERY cold nights.....with temps down around 30 degrees, so this decrease was of no surprise. Air was 49 degrees, which was up quite a bit from a day or so ago. Suppose to get up to 80 degrees by mid afternoon today! Crazy!

This is what the pond (aka, Lake Placid!) looked like as we headed out to the main body:

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And once that sun broke out, it rapidly got hot, with almost no wind at all. We drifted the main basin area for awhile and picked up one or two here & there. Then the air died on us completely. And with the sun starting to beat down on us, the bite just got tougher. This is the one & only bait ball & fish we found today:

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Although it looked promising, the screen stayed blank for the rest of the morning! Very disappointing. This was the only decent fish today - that Walt caught:

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When we pulled off around noon, we had only caught & released 9 fish. Only 3 were crappie with 2 bluegill, 2 small largemouths, Walt's fine yellow perch and one white perch. Certainly not on par for us for sure, but still enjoyable to be out on the water regardless.

And this guy had a great time preening and splashing about on the surface near our boat:

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Loons love this pond! Too bad the fish were not as infatuated though! We tried water as shallow as 9' too. Straight tailed plastics seemed to perform best (if you can call it that!), and my "gray ghost" horse head spin (aka: Road Runner custom tied by "skiptomylou") accounted for most of my catches. We'll see what the weather folks have to say, but it looks like we're in for a stormy, rainy week ahead. We'll see. We'll certain do our best to get out there as soon as possible.

Hope you folks got out to wet a line. God Bless America. :)

You guys need your trolling motor back in service! As you say, it was good to be out there giving it a whirl; better than staying home and cutting the grass or washing the car, right? Hopefully, you guys will get a few more chances at them before they close the lake for the season. That is a nice perch for sure. I might have to set aside a trip just for perch; lately when I've hooked them they have hit hard and given a pretty good tussle, especially the bigger ones like in your picture.

Nice photos! Whether or not we catch what we want, it's beautiful to be out there these days.

I had a similar experience on a deep cold pond I visit sometimes, mainly known for trout. Loons seemed well fed, but what fish I could see on the depth finder at about 25-30 feet were not interested in anything I tried to tempt them with. I do think they were actively feeding because of the rapid vertical movement on the depth sounder. But on what, I have no idea.

This pond does have a lot of baitfish, so maybe they were just well fed and not interested in lures by comparison. I'll wait a week or two and try again. But it has been the third time in a row that I was skunked there.

On the CT river, I've caught mainly bass, and not crappies this week after that cold snap. Though I haven't hit my most productive spots. Been exploring more, just to widen my knowledge.

Great to read about someone else up here doing the same thing! I did really enjoy your post.

Seems that the fishing has been a little tough here in the Northeast lately. Hopefully after some rain things will change for everyone.