Cold As A Witch's Nose

[Will Wetline]

Many anglers look forward to the opening of Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts about the middle to late April each year.  "The Q" is big water and regarded as one of the best smallmouth fisheries in New England.

 

I had been chomping at the bit since March and even though the weather report for Sunday, April 25 ranged from uncomfortable to thoroughly miserable I was determined to go - a bassmaster's gotta do what he's gotta do.

 

John and I were casting into 42º water at 7:00 a.m. The sky was filled with dark bottomed clouds and the wind was blowing 10 - 15 MPH. There were whitecaps on areas less sheltered than where we were anchored. Not fun and not promising. I love to throw a suspending jerkbait when the water is in the high 40ºs to low 50ºs but didn't spend much time with one this morning. A better strategy would be something  s l o w l y  dragged along the bottom in staging areas in 10 - 20 feet of water.

 

About 9:00:

 

 

this plump, 4.5 lb. largemouth picked up one of my long time go-to baits, a GYCB 5" Hula Grub. In the past I had always rigged this Texas style using a 3/16 oz. tungsten bullet, a 6mm faceted red bead and a 2/0 Gamakatsu standard wire EWG hook. During the winter finally past, I had gotten a Do-It Shake It jig mold. Here's the first batch:

 

 

As an aside, let me ask if there are any other Dipanddriposauruses out there or am I the last dinosaur using vinyl paint? Still using it because I'm long familiar with this foul smelling but durable finish and because I'm pouring RotoMetals bismuth/tin alloy (No lead jigs or weights under 1 oz. permitted in Massachusetts!) which melts at about 281º. Would someone tell me, please, if I can cure powder paint thoroughly without opening the oven to find bare hooks?

 

Getting back to this fishing trip, John and I are looking for big, prespawn smallies. The next species we connect with is:

 

 

 

lake trout. To catch these, the trout guys usually troll wire line at great depth. In the springtime, when the water is this cold, you can see it's possible to establish a hula grub/lake trout pattern which, to my knowledge is something of a novelty.

 

But we weren't out for novelty - we were out for big smallies, gosh darn it!!! So how to get one? Most early season guys will tell you blade baits and I know they're right. But the blade bite is short lived and I don't own any. So I went old school, traditional, with bucktail and marabou:

 

 

For those interested, the bucktails are tied on the product of Do-It's Tapered Tube Head mold and the Woolly Buggers on Do-It's Steelhead Ball Jig mold.

 

Now it's about 3:00 p.m. and I'm thinking that a white bucktail with a good ole Uncle Josh Spinning Strip might be just the thing for a chilled-out smallie.

 

 

Yes!

 

Stay tuned through June for more adventures on Quabbin.

[GoneFishi'n]

Great write up!

[Tuckahoe Joe]

Awesome fish and trip!  I like the last picture.  Your looking at the lure like "little bucktail, ya done good".

[Uncle Leo]

Good job, hair in cold water was the ticket. Oh and I believe the saying goes Cold as a Witches T_t

[Topwaterspook]

Great post. Creatively narrated. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks for the effort.

[A-Jay]

WTG WW ~ !

 

Growing up outside of Boston, spring fishing on the Q was standard operations for several years. 

It was quite a fishery back then and by the looks of it, still going strong today.

Making it happen in those conditions is a testament to your commitment & experience.

 

Congrats.

 

A-Jay

[Dwight Hottle]

Excellent report.  

[ProCrafter]

Great foul weather trip and report!!!

[Paul Roberts]

Just a great report. Loved reading it. And great images and catches too.

 

Yours are the only bucktails with overhead spinners I've seen, beyond the ones I've made. I conjured them up years ago as something to literally crawl for coldwater bass. I tied mine with more bucktail and called them "hairbrushes". The overhead spinner really slowed them down. But I was fishing them shallower than you probably were. Next up in speed was the bucktails or marabou with a pork strip. Just great to see them still in action. They truly are of the very best coldwater lures. And the coldwater period really is one of the best times to hang some of the biggest bass in any given lake or pond. You were sitting in a fine spot at that place and time.

 

Lakers -I'm actually not surprised, being from NYs Finger Lakes country. Your water column was virtually isothermic there, and our FL lakers come shallow then and we'd catch a few too, although most of our fish tended to suspend in those elongated bathtubs. In Lake Ontario, our spring and early summer fishing on certain rocks piles often bounced between smallies and brown trout, depending on wind rolling up cold water or not.

 

Love your jig drying set up too.

 

Its nice to see a thoughtful angler at work. Thanks for sharing your fishing with us.

 

Tell me, if you will, how did you choose the areas you fished? What did you look for, or find?

[Will Wetline]

Just a great report. Loved reading it. And great images and catches too.

 

Yours are the only bucktails with overhead spinners I've seen, beyond the ones I've made. I conjured them up years ago as something to literally crawl for coldwater bass. I tied mine with more bucktail and called them "hairbrushes". The overhead spinner really slowed them down. But I was fishing them shallower than you probably were. Next up in speed was the bucktails or marabou with a pork strip. Just great to see them still in action. They truly are of the very best coldwater lures. And the coldwater period really is one of the best times to hang some of the biggest bass in any given lake or pond. You were sitting in a fine spot at that place and time.

 

Lakers -I'm actually not surprised, being from NYs Finger Lakes country. Your water column was virtually isothermic there, and our FL lakers come shallow then and we'd catch a few too, although most of our fish tended to suspend in those elongated bathtubs. In Lake Ontario, our spring and early summer fishing on certain rocks piles often bounced between smallies and brown trout, depending on wind rolling up cold water or not.

 

Love your jig drying set up too.

 

Its nice to see a thoughtful angler at work. Thanks for sharing your fishing with us.

 

Tell me, if you will, how did you choose the areas you fished? What did you look for, or find?

 

First, thank you all very much for the good words. Ha, Uncle Leo - I I do know the commonly used expression about which part of a witch's anatomy gets cold but, being a comparatively new contributing member of BR who has actually read the rules before posting, figured I'd better not use it. Were you fishing with me and something went wrong, you could be sure I wouldn't use as mild an expression as "gosh darn it!" either.

 

Paul, I had the great fortune back in '93 of running into a well equipped, experienced, arguably overly-focussed fisherman in the middle of the Q while I was putt-putting around in a rental boat. For a number of reasons, Dean no longer fishes Quabbin but I fished with him regularly for 10 years. Now I'm back to a 14', 8 HP aluminum rental boat without sonar or electric and pretty much follow Dean's milk run, seasonally adjusted. Early, I fish steep breaks off the edges of spawning flats. In a month or sooner I'll be on top of these flats and humps. Postspawn, I'll be working the edges again.

 

Since I don't have what a modern bass angler would consider "mobility," I'm very thorough after I've dropped the anchor. I may, in June, start with topwater and end up scraping a few extra fish from the bottom with a slowly swum tube. On a cloudy day they may smash a chrome crank. I grin on a day so windy my mother would worry because I was crossing thousands of acres of white capped water in search of smallies looking to annihilate my 1/2 oz. tandem spinnerbait.

 

To sum up, I pretty much adhere to the late, great Buck Perry's concise formula: F + L + P = S.

 

And I also take time out to watch the eagles soar and to try to decipher what the loons are saying to me.

 

WW

[Paul Roberts]

Thanks. Sounds like bass fishing.

[Big-O]

Thanks! Great read and photos too  

[Siebert Outdoors]

Awesome story!!

[quanjig]

Way to work it out. Thanks for the great report with cool pics!!

[je1946]

Hey Will, Enjoyed your write up.   I use the dip it paints on my bismuth/tin jig heads, I hold the hook bend with a pair of pliers and run the head under the gas flame (I do it when the little woman isn't home)and hold em there just long enough to get the paint to stick then its back and forth under the flame to get the paint to cure and yes I do ruin some on occassion, It's a pain in the butt but it works, sometimes I ask myself does color really make a difference on a jig head.  I'll be on the Q on Sun and Mon. throwing Jerks, slow crawling hula grubs, kalin grubs, and throwing the blade. report to follow.