30 Minutes After Launch, I Knew I Was Doomed

I was inching along above the West Neck Bridge about 9:30 when I tossed my jerkbait up between a couple of partly submerged logs, twitched it once, saw the line jump, and set the hook. I felt the fish for only a few seconds, though, before the line went limp. All I had hanging from the lure when I got it back was a scale on the jerkbait's rear hook.

I feel pretty sure I've mentioned before that one of my superstitions is that if I lose the first fish of the day, I'm likely to spend the rest of the day just getting in some casting practice. Today was no exception. I fished until 2:30 and never felt another living thing on the end of my line. The closest thing to it was a fish that I spooked with a cast about an hour before I quit. He simply went the opposite direction, though, when my lure hit the water.

The weather couldn't have been any nicer today. I can't remember the last time I had a day with the kind of light winds that were in abundance. You actually could get off the trolling motor for a few minutes without worrying about where the boat would end up.

Today's water temp ranged from 44 degrees when I started to 50 when I quit this afternoon. Color throughout West Neck was pretty nice, and I talked to a kayaker who told me Pocaty also was in good shape. Like me, however, he came up empty-handed at day's end. I found him sitting in the middle of a school of baitfish near the ramp as I pulled up to recover my boat this afternoon, casting everywhere, trying to get whatever was making the baitfish jump to hit a lure. It never happened, though, so he pulled his kayak out of the water right behind me.

All in all, it was a bit disappointing, considering how nice the weather was, but as I consider everything in hindsight, I tend to believe my better choice might have been Albright's. I notoriously do better in West Neck during times of low water. Oh well, there's always next time.

Ron, on the other hand, had a decent trip this afternoon. His evening email noted that he launched at Lotus Garden at 4 o'clock and headed toward Back Bay.

All his fish turned out to be dinks, including two sub-9-inch crappie, an 8-inch yellow perch, 10-inch chain pickerel, and an 11-inch bass. Ron indicated beetle spins and a Shadow Rap were the ticket to his success.

Back Bay also was very clear today, but Ron said a fair amount of green slime blobs kept getting snagged on his lures. He also reported that it got a bit chilly after the sun went down.

"Not a bad start to February," he concluded.

Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017...Ron took a trip to Milldam this evening from 4:30 to 6 p.m. His goal was to find some panfish, but he instead found a 1-2 largemouth and a 14-inch striper. He caught both fish on the XTS Minnow. "Nothing else was working," he said.

Unfortunately, more of those "green globs of slime" that have been hampering Ron's efforts were in abundance yet again this evening. "They're driving me crazy," he noted, adding, "they have to go away!" He further described 'em as being "all over the surface" and "difficult to get off the hooks."