Another Quabbin Reservoir Trip

Yesterday, my fishing partner Walt & myself, hit the Quabbin Res again for crappie. Wind wasn't blowing as much as we'd like. Only 5 - 10 mph. We'd much prefer 10 - 20 mph for our "speed drifting" technique, but what are you going to do! We managed between 50 - 60 crappie & bluegil, with one lone yellow perch.

We drifted with 1/16 & 1/8 oz. ball head jigs (#4 barbless hooks) with a variety of plastics on the tail end. Most successful were the BG Baby Shads, catching 3 to 1 over the other plastics we tried. We had rods (2 ea.) set up with the straight tails, tubes & curly tails on these drifts. Tubes came in second and the curly tails just were not producing very well. Probably due to the lack of drift speed. Also of note that the 1/8 oz. ball heads produced more than the 1/16 oz. heads, over 22' of water. With the breezes as light as they were, chances are the crappie kept lower in the water column. Never got a chance to wet the paddle tails (I like the Zoom 2" paddletail shad shape grubs), because I figured the slow drift would not give the tail enough action.

Here's some pics of our day:











All in all, a decent day with all fish released. We some at boatside, but landed the majority. Broke off only 2 fish on the 2# test mono leader, ahead of the 2# test Fireline braid. No knot failures occurred with the Alberto connecting the two.

EDIT: If the thunderstorms hold off tomorrow, we'll give it another whirl! Will keep you posted.