Yesterday was a perfect spring day here in CT and I headed out to cap it off with a trip to the pond, looking to harvest some of those nice pre-spawn 'gills I found on my last trip. I pushed off just after 4 with the air temp at 75 under cloudless blue skies and the water temp about 67.
I worked the shallows with plenty of action with bluegills of all sizes. They had to break the 8" mark to get tossed in the cooler and I had no problem finding them of that length and over. Here are a few snaps of some of my keepers.

Name: IMG_2791.jpg Views: 50 Size: 61.7 KB

Name: IMG_2793.jpg Views: 48 Size: 74.4 KB

Name: IMG_2794.jpg Views: 47 Size: 70.1 KB

I found only 2 crappie on this trip but both were 12" hard fighters, one early on in the trip, the other quite late in the trip.

Name: IMG_2789.jpg Views: 48 Size: 129.7 KB

Name: IMG_2795.jpg Views: 47 Size: 82.7 KB

Early on, while fishing along toward the point, out of the corner of my eye I caught a fast moving blur of a bird diving out of the sky toward something on land. Next thing I head was the warning cries of some Canada geese that I could not see and as I looked toward the sound, I saw a gosling pop up from under water. I quickly moved down the shore toward the point and Mom and Pop goose were paddling quickly away from the point with 1 gosling in tow. I searched the trees and finally found what I think was an immature bald eagle with an unlucky gosling that was going to be dinner. He flew up to another bigger tree deeper in the woodline and began to chow down his fresh caught dinner. Nature can be tough to watch sometimes.

A total of 47 fish got unhooked last night. I kept an even dozen big 'gills for a meal or 3, along with the 2 crappie. I ended up tossing back a good number of 'gills that made the 8" mark as I had enough to clean for this trip. I fished lots of shoreline that I don't normally work so my take was spread out over a lot of the lake front.

Name: IMG_2796.jpg Views: 47 Size: 57.4 KB

The mixed bag included 1 small pickerel and about a half dozen each of perch and bass. Most were caught single pole casting but I did manage to catch a few of each species while trolling. I probably could have caught a few more but I called it a night about 7:20 and headed for the beach.