Eastern Ma & New England Area Fishing Reports

[je1946]

3 hours ago, Janderson45 said:

Got my first tournament win in the new boat this weekend on Winnipesaukee!  Caught a bunch of smallmouth during practice and the pattern I figured out on Friday carried me through Saturday and Sunday.  Nothing overly impressive weight wise, but bringing in 5 healthy smallies both days helped edge out the competition that struggled to find fish at all, especially on Sunday.  The key for me was fishing deep offshore structure in the middle of the lake, I had numerous humps and deep points all to myself, not another fisherman in sight for 3 days.  Water temps were 65-68, the majority of my smallmouth came out of 45-50 feet of water if you can believe it.  I found some shallower in practice, but the deep spots were producing with a lot more consistency.  

 

Top producers on Sat/Sunday for me were a dropshot and a football jig.  Smallies were very particular on color, a 3.5" dropshot bait in smoke/purple was the ticket for me.  Went through 3 packs of em and they landed me probably 40-50 smallmouth over the 3 days.  I think the deep smallies I was catching were primarily feeding on smelt.

 

All in all had a blast, Winni isn't as good as Champlain, but it's a fun lake with tons of fish in it's own right, with beautiful scenery to boot!

 

Congrats.  Told you it would take LM to win.lol 

[Janderson45]

11 minutes ago, je1946 said:

Congrats.  Told you it would take LM to win.lol 

 

Ha I know!  That sentiment was in my mind on the final day, the guy who came in second is a darn good fisherman and I knew he'd be going after largemouth.  I contemplated making a gamble and running all the way up to Lees Mill in search of greenies but decided against it.    Figured I'd need about 15lbs of smallies to have a shot and "if it ain't broke don't fix it".  Turns out 12lbs of smallies was all it took.  Glad it worked out ?

[je1946]

Nice going and again congratulations

[Janderson45]

Anyone fish Cochituate recently?  Thinking about entering an open tournament there in a few weeks but I hardly know anything about it..  it's never been high on my list of destinations for whatever reason but apparently there's some decent largemouth fishing there.  I plan to at least check it out once before making my final decision, but any info about the lake would be great!

 

Bottom composition, water clarity, available structure/cover and any hints from previous success are welcome. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

 

Heres a few more pics and a short video from this weekend:

 

Day 1 weigh in:

 

Day 2 weigh in:

 

Running to my fishing grounds on the morning of day 2:

 

[Mr. Aquarium]

congrats, nice smallies, winnin is beautiful. 

 

caught a couple bass this past weekend, biggest 3lbs on a jig. caught 2 decent bullheads as well

NH tomorrow for some white mountain brookies. 

NEW YORK NEXT WEEK!!! FOR SOME GIANT TROUT AND SALMON!!!! CANT WAIT

[DogBone_384]

Fishing Rhino and I fished Wequequot yesterday from 0530 to 1430-ish.  We both did well until around 1030 or so when the bite pretty well shut off.  My biggest LMB was 4-2 and Tom’s was 4-4.  Water temps were 68.x - 70.x.  

 

I stopped by Hedges on the way home in search of some ‘easy’ smallies.   I launched around 1530-1600 and covered the whole place TWICE.  I landed a single SMB, about a pound, on a wacky Senko, over by the birch tree that fell in the water a while back.  At least I didn’t get shut out.  Water temps were 68.x

 

Today’s adventure started at Ponkie around coffee break time with glass smooth water and overcast skies.  Pickerel hit anything shiny.  I grabbed a handfull of small picks and LMB on a Rapala pencil bait and T-rigged Yum Swim Dinger.  One LMB weighed in at 2-4.  Water temps were 64.x.

 

After heading home and doing laundry/housework I saw it was too nice to stay home so off to Sunset Lake in Braintree since it was the closest pond that I wouldn’t get bogged down in rush hour traffic travelling to.  Got there about 1700 and stayed until dark.  Managed one 1-12 LMB, which is good because Braintree treated the pond in ‘16 and killed off most of the weeds.  There’s still JACK NOTHING for weeds.  My bass liked the same Swim Dinger the Ponkie bass ate.  Water temp was 65.x - 66.x.

[LadiMopar]

12 hours ago, DogBone_384 said:

After heading home and doing laundry/housework I saw it was too nice to stay home so off to Sunset Lake

@DogBone_384 I have to admit I really like your "style"; you don't happen to offer a training program I could send my mostly "non fishing" husband to do you?   ?

[Chris186]

On 10/3/2018 at 10:03 AM, Janderson45 said:

Anyone fish Cochituate recently?  Thinking about entering an open tournament there in a few weeks but I hardly know anything about it..  it's never been high on my list of destinations for whatever reason but apparently there's some decent largemouth fishing there.  I plan to at least check it out once before making my final decision, but any info about the lake would be great!

 

Bottom composition, water clarity, available structure/cover and any hints from previous success are welcome. 

 

Thanks in advance. 

 

 

 

Cochituate has weeds, weeds and more weeds. Well, it usually does, not sure about the end of October though. I haven't fished there this time of year. It is made up of three ponds. A lot  of the tourneys I have fished there have been won in the south pond which is where I normally fish. If you can fit your boat through the tunnel thats where I would go. I never had much success in the middle pond, but I have also caught a few good ones in the north pond. There are big ones in there, I can remember some years back a guy in my old club caught a couple that were pushing 8lbs. Spinnerbaits along the weed lines seem to excel there as well as jigs and soft plastics, in my experience anyway. The ramp is pretty much one big long ramp where you launch and pull straight forward into a parking spot. It is also steep and typically covered in goose ****. Also if they still have the docks in the water at the ramp be careful using them, they can be very slippery.

[Janderson45]

Appreciate the info!  Spinnerbaits along the weed edges was no doubt going to be part of my game plan regardless, but glad to hear you confirm it.  

[MassYak85]

@Janderson45 I thought they were doing ramp reconstruction at Cochituate? I haven't been by so I don't know what kind of progress they've made or if you can still use any of it but they were supposed to start a 1 million dollar total revamp of that entire parking lot and ramp area starting this fall. No idea on timeline though. 

 

I've fished it a couple dozen times probably over the years, nothing over 4, a few 3s. I never do well there, numbers wise or size. I mostly fish the middle and north pond. There are some decent weedlines that drop off into 40+ feet in the middle pond and one point/shoreline on the north pond that seems to hold some. I did catch a nice pickerel over the summer there though, just got my pin in the mail today actually. Structure and cover are pretty scarce away from the bank from my experience. Like @Chris186 said the south pond has a VERY narrow archway but I've heard of people doing well in that section. I think most bass boats can squeeze through but it's tight, any high windshields and you can basically forget about it. 

 

I've also never fished there later into the year (other from shore during the winter) so I'll be curious to know how you do. I'm sure there's some nice ones in there somewhere but I am usually frustrated trying to locate fish on that lake. 

[Janderson45]

26 minutes ago, MassYak85 said:

@Janderson45 I thought they were doing ramp reconstruction at Cochituate? I haven't been by so I don't know what kind of progress they've made or if you can still use any of it but they were supposed to start a 1 million dollar total revamp of that entire parking lot and ramp area starting this fall. No idea on timeline though. 

 

I saw that listed on the state website as well, not sure what the deal is but am going to look into it.  That would be pretty poor planning on the organizers if the ramp and parking is all closed!  

[DogBone_384]

11 hours ago, LadiMopar said:

@DogBone_384 I have to admit I really like your "style"; you don't happen to offer a training program I could send my mostly "non fishing" husband to do you?   ?

Sorry, he’s on his own.  My Fire Department work schedule allows me sufficient time to work a second job, do housework and fish....  My wife works full time.  

 

I look pretty good in a French Maid outfit too.... 

[MassYak85]

Me and my dad hit Webster on Friday. Water surface temps were in the low 60s.  The morning started off well, sun came up and right away my dad caught a couple on a spinnerbait. A bank of clouds rolled in shortly after and it got downright COLD and we couldn't find fish after that for a few hours. Early afternoon the wind died a bit and the sun came out, it was much more comfortable so we tried a few spots out deeper. I managed to get some pictures of an absolute massacre of baitfish we came across (sorry pictures are pretty crappy). I thought the electronics were acting up but nope...a huge school of bait throughout nearly the entire water column. To be honest I'm not very confident fishing deeper than like 25ft usually, and fishing middle of the water column or chasing schooling bait is something I'm even more uncomfortable doing, so this was definitely a learning experience. We got over the school and immediately my dad got a nice smallie on a spinnerbait near the surface. I decided to try deeper with a blade bait jigged through the school. That definitely did the trick, I had like 4-5 casts in a row of bass crushing it. Unfortunately they were all aggressive little ones (mostly largies), with one keeper smallie thrown in. But man were they fat little butterballs, they had clearly already gorged themselves down there. Unfortunately we didn't connect with any big ones and the school seemed to break up rather quickly and we couldn't relocate them after that.

 

Any tips for approaching these kinds of situations? I've always heard the bigger ones like to wait at the bottom and "clean up the scraps" but have no actual experience with that. And from the sonar shot it seemed like the bigger ones were darting in and out of the school pretty actively.

 

 

 

[je1946]

On 10/4/2018 at 9:27 PM, DogBone_384 said:

Sorry, he’s on his own.  My Fire Department work schedule allows me sufficient time to work a second job, do housework and fish....  My wife works full time.  

 

I look pretty good in a French Maid outfit too.... 

You got any pics of you in that french maids outfit? lol

[gjfisher]

Caught about 10 LMBs and a half dozen smallies in south MA yesterday.  The LMBs were munching on shads in the shallow and shad flavored square bills and flukes were productive.  The smallies were not aggressively feeding and I was only able to catch them with finesse jigs and a ned rig.  The largest LMB weighed 3lb10oz and no smallie over 2lbs.  Water temp was 63.

[Janderson45]

Drove out to Barton Cove with a buddy on Saturday.  We were hoping for a nice scenic fall day full of smallmouth on the northern CT river. The sun never broke through as it was supposed to, and temps never got out of the low 50s with persistent cloud cover.  Water temps were 60-62 degrees, and the bass were definitely in a bit of a funk.  Air temps had gotten down to into the high 30s the night before and I think the first real cold night shocked the fish a bit.  Water levels were also a bit higher than usual from what I could gather.

 

We were on the water for 7AM and ran north towards the border quite a ways, once we got to a spot I thought I liked we proceeded to cover lots of ground with topwater and chatterbaits.  Hooked up with one largemouth that slurped a whopper plopper but that was it for the first ~2 hours or so.  Next spot I set up on was some bridge pilings near  the Rt. 10 bridge, marked lots of bait and tried to coax what we assumed to be smallmouth with Ned rigs, dropshot, and finesse jigs.  All that yielded for another hour or two was and handful of rock bass.

 

Frustrated I ran back down towards the Cove and tried to fish some weeds for largemouth, no luck with the area I targeted for that either.  After that we headed back up north a little ways and finally found some active smallies, proceeded to have a slug fest on dinks from 6-10", not quite what I had in mind.  Eventually we found a few decent smallies mixed in, and finished up the day fishing weeds near the ramp where I connected on a decent largie on a frog and missed one on a jig.

 

All in all a bit frustrating, but enjoyable day on the river.  This was my first time ever fishing the CT river and it was a learning process to be sure.  Next time will be better I hope.

 

 

[MassYak85]

@Janderson45 Beautiful markings on those smallies! 

 

This weekend was reeeaaallly slow for me. Only thing I could consistently catch were pickerel with a few bass mixed in.  

 

Edit*

 

Went to A1 from shore for a couple hours this afternoon with just a handful of swimbaits. I got my first bite on a slammer slowly waked near a patch of pads. I swear the fish know when I'm not paying attention with slammers because I had my head turned when the fish bit, and I missed it. I fired a hudd 68 back to the same spot hoping for a second chance....surprisingly the fish cooperated and I got a nice solid hookset, fought it for about 2 seconds aaaaaaaand it popped off. Didn't look that big, maybe 2.5-3lbs but frustrating for sure to lose the same fish twice in a row. No other bites after that. I just made the switch to braid to leader on my jig hook swimbait setup for hudds and stuff and I'm really liking it so far, I can feel the tail kicking at the end of a cast it's pretty crazy. That hookset was pretty fun too there's no "did I set it hard enough?" after you lose one, you swing the rod and it just stops dead. 

[DogBone_384]

I started for Wampatuck State Park to see what was what.  Upon entering the park I passed a sign saying compground closed, gates locked at 3:30, so that was that.  

 

I headed south and randomly picked Stetson Pond in Pembroke.  I fished it once before with a friend’s son.  I hit the water between 3:30 - 4:00 and stayed until dark.

 

I forgot my battery but found a map and started around the place trying to stay around the 10’ line.  I managed three LMB, all around a pound and a half, in some grass beds I found off a point near the launch.  Nobody was interested in soft baits today.  All three fish chomped on a bluegill Yozuri square bill.

 

There was a local guy fishing there and said it was slow lately.

 

I’ll get out somewhere tomorrow.  I’ll remember my battery too.

[Mr. Aquarium]

went up to NH for some hiking and fly fishing for brookies over the weekend, didnt see one fish. idk how to fish in the fall for brookies

[Dunks N Dinks]

I didn't hit the lake this weekend, but I did put some of my freshwater spinning tackle to the ultimate test on Saturday/Sunday chasing green missiles. The Albie bite is on fire off the point of Monomoy and hooking up with one on light tackle is like fighting a 15lb small-mouth that just had a bad break-up. Need to re-spool and replace a few guides after this weekend.     

[Mr. Aquarium]

thats awesomw. i love bones and albies, dont get to go after them often, only caught one albie 

[LadiMopar]

On ‎10‎/‎6‎/‎2018 at 8:05 PM, je1946 said:

You got any pics of you in that french maids outfit? lol

I'd pay to see that! ?

 

Went to Tully in Royalston Sunday and put five in the yak. Nothing huge, but one nice 3.5. Water temps running between 60-63. Posted the pics on the Latest Catch thread.

[DogBone_384]

Spent the late afternoon at Ponkie yesterday. Grabbed a handfull of LMB and pickerel, a typical outing here. My two biggest LMB were 1-7 and 1-4.

 

A bluegill Yozuri square bill and black/blue t-rigged Chigger-craw were the ticket.  

 

Water temps were 67-.x when I arrived and 69.x when I left.

[MassYak85]

Weather looks a lot more "Fall-like" going into the weekend and next week. Hopefully the consistently dropping water temps get them into that fall feeding mood ?. Water temps should be into the 50's by next weekend at least for the places I usually fish. 

[DogBone_384]

While looking for new spots to try out I discovered our "great" Commonwealth updated many of the survey maps and reports for waters around the state.

 

Here's the link:   https://www.mass.gov/service-details/massachusetts-pond-maps-list-view

 

...though some maps aren't, quoting the state regarding Blueberry Pond in Brewster: "Blueberry Pond is a natural great pond which under the Colonial Ordinances of 1641-1647 allows an angler to pass over unimproved lands on foot. Lands under the control of the town of Brewster are located along North Pond Drive and the Cape Cod Rail Trail borders unimproved land along the northern side of the pond..."