MassBass

This is tiger trout. It's really not a bad fish even though it is so thin. These things are starving when they hold over. They need a plentiful population of bait to eat good and fill out, and I am afraid the pond where they are stocked doesn't really offer that. There was a bite window where I could have caught at least two more but they shook off. Small jerk bait.

Break out the live bait, or go home and mow the lawn.

My grandparents had a camp on an island, on Winnipesaukee, the biggest lake in New Hampshire. My Grandfather wasn't a fisherman but I had been introduced to fishing from my dad. The shore of the island was rugged with boulders and the water was crystal clear. You could gaze into the water and see sunfish and baby bass. I think it was my older cousin who exposed me to the smallmouth. I believe it was the moment, when through goggles, I saw a big smallmouth take a live crayfish that he dropped down to it. I never went to summer camp as a kid. I wanted to go to the Island, and fish. Through various small craft, the old standby was the aluminum canoe. Powered by paddles. By noon the lake would be rolled over and white capping with either boat wakes or North West winds, so I would get up very early before the wind and waves and head out in the canoe. Fish top water for smallmouths. I was still a young kid at 11 or 12, but I had poppers and walk baits with hardly any paint left on them. A lot of time was also spent trolling crankbaits. Lures like the fat rap, shad rap, and wally diver. I remember one time my dad and I were trolling 'down the line' and he wanted to keep a nice smallmouth to eat. The wind was blowing and they were being aggressive. He clipped it onto one of those metal chain stringers and we resumed trolling. Then the smallie started thrashing on the stringer, and broke the chain and disappeared. So anyways my bass fishing as a kid was smallmouth first.

Consider that in some Maine regions, the Northern Pike is an invasive. When these monsters get into a lake that was historically a native brook trout fishery, forget it no more brook trout. Something interesting about the Pike, is that small pike are a warm water fish, but when they get big they become a cold water fish. So to target big pike over small pike may require different tactics depending on the season. For example bass anglers fishing shallow in summer will probably only encounter small pike. In that season to go for big pike in a lake you would have to fish deep. My biggest pike was caught in a river in late spring. River pike are probably comparable to river musky. They are more predictable to locate and usually more aggressive than lake fish.

Limited out last night with the help of a small tiger trout. Two good takes on a spoon, had to switch to bait to get that last bite.

Got on some rainbows, could have limited out, but I guess I made the mistake of leaving fish to find maybe bigger fish. So made off with two, couldn't get a third.

Minnow bait fished erratically has a good way of triggering trout when they are not aggressive towards spoons and spinners.

I use a very firm grip with pliers, then twist the tag end with fingers. Those stock spinner wires come with one end already twisted.

Brown trout

You need to suffer to catch fish. This may mean; you need to fail, again and again, to figure out a new lake or a new specie. Or, as we come into the cold weather seasons, it may mean quite literally suffering, fishing the cold wind driven rain of November, for a fish few others would ever encounter.

These are supposed to be smelt:

How did anybody ever run a boat before sonar?

There gonna start hittin; and runnin. I think every fairly deep pond, that is trout stocked year after year, could hold big holdovers. Those are cool but I am big into spoons for the ponds. Casting distance is critical for fishing a deep pond from shore. When I saw the cold water savagery of big browns at Walden early this year, it changed me.

A couple rainbows were runnin:

Stream yellow perch and some lake toothies in my bud's vessel