Report; 10/18/17

Hail to the KING.....Hail to.....Walter?? Anyway, it was one of those days! We launched at 9:00 am on the Oxbow of the Ct. River system. Air was a brisk 38 degrees with the water at 57 degrees. Yeah, I know....this is New England, but the foliage goddess has yet to perform her magic here:

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I have a feeling that when the really cold nights hit us, the leaves will drop instead of putting on their spectacular colors. Still a pretty way to start the day. Winds were either calm or up to a light breeze. Started off with me hitting the first two fish, a crappie and a gill. After that, it was all Walt! He not only had the hot rod with respect to quantity, but quality as well. We ended up with 30 fish when we pulled off at 2 pm. A very pleasant day to be on the water.

We started hitting the shallows and we'd hit one here and one there (yep, with Walt doing most of the hitting I might add). He stuck with pinky-shad patterned straight tails. I decided - erroneously - to switch up with several other colors schemes and styles of plastics; Roadrunners, paddle tails and curly tail plastics etc.. For the both of us, the straight tails outperformed all others today. Go figure!

Then we moved out to the main basin, finding occasional heavy concentrations here and there:

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These were crappie as we caught several when this school passed under us as we drift-trolled with a light breeze. As soon as we marked fish, we'd get hit. It may take us awhile to figure this place out, but I believe we are off to a decent start. Here are some of the pictures I took of Walter's "Field Day":

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Not a bad bunch of fish, no matter where you are. The largest crappie are what we use to catch all the time here, but lately, most are less than these specimens photographed here. We'll get 'em dialed in eventually, if the weather holds and the ice stays away for a month or more longer.

Here's our tally sheet; that little number down at the lower right bears mentioning. Walt nailed a nice northern pike and did battle for a couple of minutes. Just when I was about to grasp the head, it turned to make another run under the boat......good bye! Oh well, it was close enough for government work. :)

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The "BG" is bluegill and "YP" are yellow perch. I almost forgot to mention that as we started out from the launch ramp, we were greeted by an osprey and a large redtailed hawk. I tried to snap a quick pic, but they took off. Saw several king fishers, cormorants and blue heron as well. Great day to be alive and fishing with a fine partner.

Good report.....looks like its getting cooler up there

Great report of a super day on the water, thanks for posting!

I think you're correct on what the foliage is going to do this year. I have almost the exact same conditions here; get a bit of color going and within a day or 2, they've dropped off the tree. I'm guessing that the hillside in the 1st picture is mostly oak? No color at all to them here yet. But there is some color dotting it here and there in your picture so fall is sliding by and winter is sneaking up on us. Looks like a really nice spot to fish in.

"King Walt", those are some nice looking perch and hefty crappie; glad you had a memorable day teaching Rich how its done! :Rofl Weather looks good for few more days, I hope you guys get out again soon.