xjma99

Is shad factory and shoe factory the same place?? What do you mean by permit for trout fishing?? I"ve got a MA Fishing license....I renew on-line every year (don't necessarily always carry it, but I pay up at the end of December every year for the next, one of the only times I don't mind giving the state a few bucks!). I don't do much trout fishing as I usually fish ponds so just by default I don't often catch trout. I guess I could start.... I found what I think is Shad Factory....looks promising!! Also, my neighbor has a pond, maybe a half to three quarters of an acre like 100' off of the back of my property and apparently it's got fish! Cha-ching! Talking to another neighbor who's got a bunch of cranberry bogs....the supply ponds for the bogs are good! I guess I should have thought of that! He says I can ride my quad through there too, which is key. Then I tried out some relatively new man-made pond in another neighbors property last night and I was getting hits. All private property, but cool owners. I guess the situation isn't as bad as I thought!! Thanx for the ideas though!

Thanks for the replies guys!! I'll have to check out Watsons pond. I've seen it on the map...just wasn't sure what the deal with it was? I did the shore from Sabattia last spring, on the early side, and had no luck, and since at the time it wasn't really in my neck of the woods, never went back. I mainly shore fish(see avatar), trying to catch bass. I just like to catch em and let em go so that I can catch them again! My father in law lets me borrow his canoe sometimes for extended periods and I steal my parents kayaks when I'm not borrowing the canoe! I'd like to buy some sort of boat....but owning two quads, two lifted jeeps, and now a house limits funds for other toys!! I try to fish the nip a lot but usually just end up wasting time there. No problem losing lures or catching pickerel...I'm not a fan of catching pickerel though. I hate having to deal with their teeth when trying to get my hook(s) back (I got bit when I was a little kid, haha). I mainly hit up smaller ponds and occasionally have some good luck. You got me interested in Watson! Around here it seems that the larger ponds have very limited areas to shore fish, or those areas aren't where the fish like to hang out. I guess I should look into starting to do some brackish/salt water fishing now that I'm so close to the ocean, right?

Hey, I've been on here since last season or so but I just recently moved to Rehoboth, MA. I no longer have good public ponds right down the street, although I now own my own house with a bunch of land (and no water on it). Looking around, there aren't many water bodies in Rehoboth!! I have no idea where to fish locally! I never even heard of Rehoboth until I bought a house there (well, just before I bought it, haha). I work in Bridgewater, right near the Nip, but I'd like to find something closer to home. Any local guys have any advice?? If you couldn't tell, I'm not from this part of MA! On the plus side, my neighbor has a small farm pond that's almost all open water, and it looks VERY promising!!

I'm originally from western MA but now in live in Rehoboth in SE mass. If you tell me what town you're in I may or may not be able to point you to a hot spot or two... Western, MA is such a general term! I'm assuming that you're meaning the pioneer valley west....not Boston people's definition of western, MA, which they claim to be anything outside of 128!

^^Agreed!!^^ If I were there I would probably just sit there for a minute or so with my mouth wide open.

damnit! I'm gonna be in KY from the 18th to 21st....

How do you tell which series your Rebel Pop-Rs are?? I've got two or three....and one of them is an older hand-me-down.... Other than color and condition, I didn't really think that they were much different.

Wow, that's ballzy!! I mean, stupid! I'm surprised they didn't have security on them in a flash....but then again, I don't think bass pro has much for security. Oh well.

As of like a week or two ago they were fresh out of tip ups....not just a certain brand, all tip ups were nowhere to be found!! They said that since it was such a good year for ice, unlike last year, they sold out real quick and couldn't get more pallets of them in in time for it to be worth it to them to sell....probably would be there on the down side of the ice fishing buying time. As said already, everything else looked pretty well stocked.

Wow, wish I knew in advance!!

not sure about the laws in ohio, but usually you would need state authority to prevent people from accessing a body of water. Call your state fish and game dept. and see what they have to say about it. If they don't want to comment, call a local environmental consultant to get the real answers.

I knew there presence had to indicate at least some small piece of info. This place that I was fishing for the first time definitely had cover all over the place, predominantly in the form of vegitation that was growing into the water. I'm not great at identifying flora but some type of mountain laurel-ish stuff that had dense, woody roots growing 10-15' out into the water. I'm not sure it's worth trying again.

hard to tell, especially from pics, but I'm pretty confident that it would weigh more than 1lb!! You can get a gripper with a scale for less than 20 bux!!

Been meaning to ask this for a while. I tried a new pond the other day and there were TONZ of turtles. They kept popping their heads out of the water and looking at me. I only caught one fish the whole time I was there. I'm wondering what the presence of turtles can tell you in terms of whether or not fish are around, or even in the body of water at all. I was fishing what looked like some prime cover areas with a Trigged worm, then Trigged minnow, and got the fish on the minnow. Barely any hits. I was going real slow with my retreive...should I bump it up a notch?? I also tried a rebel popR with no luck, and a jitterbug, with no luck. Had caught two bass right around dusk a week ago on a pond about a mile away on the black jitterbug. Love the jitterbugs for dusk! Main question though, what, if anything, can turtles tell ya??

How close to the MMR were you fishing??? Wouldn't hurt to share your findings with MA Fish and Game.

holy schnikies!! 10.2 is big!!

So, I've been fishing a long time but compared to most people on this board I'm still very very much an amateur fisherman......despite the fact that I'm relatively a professional compared with most of the people that I fish with!! Anyways, it seems like people have some pretty fancy rods and reels. I've lurked and read about all these good ones, but never have I seen any pro type people even mentioning ugly stik type rods. I like to talk to people with more fishing skills than myself and try to take something from it. I guess I've never asked 'so yeah, you've got really expensive fishing gear and my stuff is cheap-o, how much does that matter?' My 'uneducated' assumption is that the amount that it actually matters is insignificant. Does it really matter, or is it just like getting from point A to point B in a ford vs. a BMW???? Same end result, one just feels a little more comfortable. I realize that I have a relatively very inexpensive rod, but to me it seems to be very sensitive, yet, I can throw it in the back of my jeep, throw a bunch of stuff on top of it, and not worry about it. I've got two ugly stiks, and two other rods that are hollow types, which are better than certain circumstances, but when I bring one rod I bring an ugly stik!! I definitely have way more money into tackle than I do into rod/reel. Probably way more tackle than I'll ever need, but just basic rods and reels. If I was lucky enough to go fishing with one of you guys, would you make fun of my crappy(not crappie) equipment???

Nice fish indeed! It's funny how sometimes you hook into a fish and by the way they fight at first you think it must be a biggun, but then it's just a regular 1-2#er.

I've never really had much luck with this style of lure. I've got a few panther martins, worden's and mepps' but not sure how to work them I guess. Do you cast and burn them, or troll them? Do you weight the line at all, or just use the lure itself? I think that I've read somewhere about removing the treble hooks and throwing a single hook on there, any thoughts on that?? I've been very successful de-weeding lakes with these lures!

pretty decent shore access to the whole lake. there is a trail that runs around the whole thing (used to be a quad trail....but they don't allow that so much anymore) and it's all town owned land. As for the bite, I haven't fished there since I was a kid.

get to whitehall early, the parking lot fills up real quick!

texas rigged black powerbait worms did the trick for me yesterday. fiancee caught a smaller largemouth on a husky jerk. the big ones liked the worms.

I went shore fishing from a tiny little pond called old pond in easton, ma yesterday afternoon for like an hour or two. It's probably less than 10 acres in size and right on a main road. It's an old impoundment that used to power a mill. Anyways, I caught what was probably the biggest largemouth that I've ever caught in my life!!! I don't have a scale (getting one today after work) and didn't have a camera with us, again, unfortunately. I caught two big largemouths on black power worms and my fiancee caught a large mouth on a husky jerk. Hers was a little guy, probably between 1-2 lbs. My first had to have been pushing 5#s, and the second definitely exceeded 5#s by a good amount! I don't really know how to tell male/female other than if I see a fat belly, but none of them had fat bellies, although they were freakin huge fish! The only tangible evidence I can give that these fish were big is that usually fish don't leave marks on my thumb from lipping them....but these ones did. They were definitely heavy to hold. Like I said, I'm going to pick myself up one of those fish scales tonight so that I can stop these guessing games!! Oh, but this post is relevant to this topic because maybe these fish big fish were agressive due to spawning?? I was on shore and couldn't see far enough to see if there were beds or not. Both fish big fish were caught in pretty shallow, probably less than 2' of water. the smaller one was caught in a little bit deeper water. I had plenty more nibbles and twice had bait in mouth but I failed to effectively set the hook. I'm going back tonight!

thanx, I'll keep that in mind!! Do you ever hunt over in the WMA by where the duck hunting place used to be? I fish from the shore over there pretty frequently(and of course wear blaze in season). Not so much because it's a good fishing spot, more just to ditch outa work for a while and get away!

Nice big fish! Where were you fishing?