There used to be a GE plant on the upper reaches of the Housatonic R in western Ma, heavy PCB’s closed the river to edible fishing. In the 90’s I’d paddle up the river and fish, being new to fresh water fishing I didn’t know most of what I caught but the river was loaded. It was a very eerie, the shore looked like something out of an old sci fi movie, big metal structures the purpose of I couldn’t even guess at. Caught, sort of, a few what I think were Northerns, never got one in the boat, they were way to much for my rods at the time.

The EPA has been working on cleaning the area up for the 20ish years, something like 250,000 tons of soil removed so far. I think they have the first 2 miles of river done, only 150 or so miles to go.

 

There is a soccer park by my house with a retention pond that runs the length of it.  During a flood about 15 years ago the creek that runs between the soccer park and a city park lake came up and made one large shallow lake for a while.  When the water went back down we discovered that some bass got caught in retention pond in the soccer park.  We went and fished it one Saturday morning maybe an hour and a half before the soccer games started.  We got quite the stares from the parents and kids when we walked back to the parking lot carrying our fishing tackle.

 

 

I’ve been going into the Atchafalaya Basin my entire life (I’m 72) and have fished it from one end to the other. Back in 1997 I was fishing in a pipeline canal that I had fished in for years. I came to where it intersected with a small natural bayou where I would usually turn right (south) to run out to another area.

 

On this day I noticed that there was a decent current coming in from the left side which I knew was coming from the Intercoastal Canal about a mile to the northeast. To be honest I had never considered fishing in this direction because I had figured it was too shallow to hold any fish. Anyway, I decided to check it out just to see if there was anything of interest.

 

The water was about 2’ or less in some places but this little bayou was absolutely loaded with shad and largemouths up to 4 lbs. I could not believe that I had passed this up so many times. It was barely wide enough to turn the boat around but if I threw a spinnerbait or red shad worm next to even the smallest piece of cover it was game on.

 

The fishing stayed excellent for a good while until the water rose from the spring floods up north but it never returned to what I enjoyed that summer and fall. Sadly, the little bayou is now too silted in to get into during the low water periods during the summer and fall.