Today was a perfect New England early fall day so I pulled the plug a bit early at work and hit the water. I just had to, it would have been a crime to miss out on such a nice day after the recent stretch of poor weather we've had here. I launched at 3:40, air temp at 70, water at 61 and very little wind. Bright, sunny skies with a few high fair weather clouds. We're even getting a bit of color for the fall foliage, too.
Tossed out the first line and as I was reaching for the 2nd pole, the first bent over hard. An 8" plus 'gill to start things off; just as I was reaching for him he gave a hard shake, got off the jig, finned me, bounced off the gunwale and dropped back in to the water, all in the blink of an eye. Heck of a start to the trip! Soon landed a nice 10" perch and a couple more nice sunnies.
I moved out in to some deeper water, 22-25' and found me some decent crappie. I landed a bunch tonight, smallest at 10", largest pushing 13", most of them around 11" or so, really nice fish compared to what I have been catching on the few trips I've made this year. Here's a few of them.
Most of the 'gills I got tonight were very nice, 8"+ fish for the most part, similar to this one. Hard fighting and eager to snap at my offerings, what's not to like about that?
The bite dropped off about 6:15 and I called it a night about 6:30 or so. Had a nice moon coming up over the trees, too.
All told, I ended up with perhaps 15 nice crappie, about the same or a few more for bluegill's, 3 perch and 1 small bass of about 10".