Trout Trifecta

Considering yesterday was Easter but it was also beautiful out, I did the logical thing and fished ALL day. I love ham which was for dinner at DJ's grandmother's Easter dinner. I have noticed that when ever I eat salty foods I get massive headaches sometimes leading to migraines ( dehydration? ). Since I have absolutely no will power, if I went to dinner I would have ate at least 1/2 pound of ham and paid the price later. I thought the best decision would be to not go over. I had no idea the weather would be so nice.

I went to Plymouth, MA to investigate some ponds I have never been before. I was mainly looking for trout, but brought my bass gear also. I put the canoe on the car along with electric motor and battery. I also knew I would be driving by the herring run in Bourne, so I brought my surf rod... just in case. I took some shiners ( I have been keeping the ones I bought last week in a fish tank ) in a five gallon bucket. Having waders, trout gear, bass tackle box, and things needed for canoe like lifejacket, seat cushion, battery, motor 4 fishing poles and shiner bucket, there was only room for me. Every other seat in the car was full of gear!

At first the weather was cloudy and foggy. I was pretty happy about this. Unfortunately it was an hour and half ride to Little Pond. By the time I got there, the sky was bright blue without a cloud in it. Since it was so nice out, there were a lot of people fishing this lake. There were at least 4 other boats and 15 groups of people along the shoreline. This is a pretty lake. It is almost entirely surrounded by woods ( Morton Park). There are plenty of " holes " in the woods to get to the shoreline, and ample room to fish at the boat ramp and beach. Long story short, I didn't catch any fish. I fished for a couple hours and put the canoe back on the roof of the car. A guy told me that at dawn the fish were jumping all over the place and he caught 20!!! Frustrating!!!

Literally across the dirt road is the boat ramp for Billington Sea, a bass lake. It was named by a Pilgrim who spotted it from climbing a tall tree. From the top of the tree, he could not tell if it were a lake or part of the sea, hence the name. I thought about fishing there but the wind picked up and even though I was frustrated by my lack of trout, I was not defeated!

I next went to Russell-Sawmill Pond. This is two 4 acre ponds connected by a culvert. They are very shallow and weedy. I have read they produce holdover trout because they are fed by underground springs. They do not look like trout ponds. Pickerel ponds yes, trout no. There is very little room to cast. I found a spot. I tried powerbait on one pole and a Roostertail on the other. Again, no luck

Of everything I have read about trout, the one thing I remember is... if there not biting in one pond go try another. The nice thing about Plymouth is it is loaded with lakes. There are easily 50. Of those 8 are stocked with trout. The not so nice thing abut Plymouth is it is HUGE. The distance between Russell-Sawmill and my next pond was either about 40 miles by taking the highway going back the way I came or 20 miles taking dirt roads. I chose the dirt roads. This was a mistake. I got lost out in the woods. I ended up on some 4 wheel drive dirt roads. You would not believe how far from civilization you can actually get. This is not Wyoming and I was easily 5-6 miles in the woods. I'm not going to lie. The 4 wd roads were fun. My little Hyundai Santa Fe did real good. I almost got stuck a couple times and had to put it in reverse and go down a hill. However, I went to fish not go mudding.

An hour and a half later... I made it to Myles Standish State Forest. It is also huge. 14000 acres. The forest is also loaded with many ponds but only one has trout, Fearings Pond. It was about 4 pm at this time. It started clouding up. Except for the occasional light gust, it was calm and the water was flat. I put on my waders packed my backpack and brought my gear to the water. I tried my fly rod using nymphs. No luck. I love practicing with my fly rod. Usually, I don't really care how many fish I catch with it. I just enjoy working on my casting. However, this was the end of a very long fishless day. I gave up Easter dinner to fish. I wanted to go home with something.

About an hour into fishing, a couple of guys came down to the water. First cast- BOOM! fish. Frustrating! Time for new tactics. I put powerbait on one rod and spinner on my other. I put the fly rod away. The water was pretty shallow ( beach) . I walked out into the water and casted the powerbait as far as I could. I'd walk it back to the beach and set it on a forked stick. I then walked out with the other pole and fish the Roostertail. If you know anything about trout you can see the problem here. Every time I got a bite on the powerbait, it was gone before I could slog my way through the water to set the hook. Finally I made a decision to stay with the powerbait.

I finally started landing fish. I caught a brown trout about a foot long. Ten minutes later a rainbow. I then had a little lull in bites. Fish started hitting flies right near my pole. I got out my fly rod again and put on a dry fly ( adams size 14). I landed a couple fish. They were not trout, but 7 inch sunfish. I didn't mind. Catching anything on the fly rod is fun. After a few minutes of this, it was getting dark and I started packing up. As I was packing, I got another hit. I set the hook on what felt like a real nice fish. I played it carefully and it even took line twice. It was a 14 inch brook trout. It easily went a pound and a half. So there it was 3 trout, 3 species, 1 lake, 1 hour.

So I could classify my day like this. A bad day fishing but a great evening fishing. I did not want to drive home fishless. It would have been painful to do that. I was very happy to catch those fish. That said, I enjoyed the day. I went to three ponds I have never been too. The weather was amazing. It was the first day over 75 degrees all year. I got to go four wheeling ( definately unscheduled ). Also on my ride home I saw 3 deer.

Lastly, I apologize that the only picture of the day is these three fish on the cutting board. By the time I caught them, I had been out 10 hours. I got lazy and just didn't feel like digging the camera out of the pack. The only freshwater gamefish I eat are trout. I let bass go and all other gamefish go. The trout are taken from ponds where they will die by June from the warm water anyway. They were raised in a hatchery. I never keep wild trout. It is just my rule. I tell you this because a picture on a cutting board does not do justice to the fish or the setting I caught them in.

Tonight I will be writing a post about using a casting bubble and fly rig. Unfortunately I lost my last bubble ( actually broke) yesterday. I'm going to the tackle shop tonight to pick up some more.