Bricks, Heroin, and Smallmouth Bass

There's something about urban fishing that I love. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as I'd tell most people I love the wilderness, and being as far from other people as possible is a priority. Yet, I get a special sort of pleasure from pulling a brown trout out from behind a shopping cart, or sight casting a carp in a concrete lined canal. As such, I was perfectly comfortable walking the streets of a Massachusetts mill town with Noah and our other friend, also named Noah, fishing the sort of places where a fly rod is viewed by passers by as about as out of place as would be a man riding a camel.

We were looking for carp, but things were a little off and we weren't finding them with any regularity. We covered ground, searching those large cyprinids, but found some remarkably colored sunfishes instead.

Lepomis gibbosus

 The redbreast sunfish below is unquestionably one of the prettiest fish I have ever caught. Funny, the lowly sunfish family is responsible for some of the most visually stunning fish specimens I've laid eyes on. This natural painting was in striking contrast to the environment it was living in.

Lepomis auritus

Lepomis auritus x Lepomis macrochirus

Soon the pattern became clear, this was going to be a bass and panfish day, not a carp day. We followed an arm of the canal down to a river, and walked the walls down river looking for a way down onto the banks so we could fish what looked like some fantastic smallmouth water. Next to a homeless encampment, we found a way down. And indeed it was fantastic smallmouth water. 

Unexpectedly it was also good crappie water, some of the best I'd ever fished. We found a couple pockets of slab crappies, a few of them even worth measuring. For a little while I was on a roll, landing slab crappie after slab crappie, the biggest being a hair over 14 inches. They were fighting pretty hard for crappies too, and I've caught black crappies over 16 inches so I've got a bit of experience in the slab department. These were impressive fish. 

Though the bass we were catching weren't "slabs" really, they weren't bad in average size. I'm used to stream smallmouth averaging eight inches. We've got some good ones in some of the rivers near where I live, but often to get quantity you have to sacrifice quality and vice versa. This was more on par with the Housatonic summer smallmouth fishery, if not a little better. Stripping a woolly bugger or twitching a jig through shadow lines, pool tailouts, back eddies, and pockets produced strike after strike. My favorite catch wasn't even the biggest, it was a bass of about 11 inches in a hard to reach back eddy. I had to wade into risky territory to make my cast and hold the rod high to get any sort of a drift. And the drift I got wasn't long but it was long enough, my fly got hammered. The fish proceeded to dive straight into the fast water and bounce from rock to rock, forcing me to really work to land him. Anyone that fishes moving water smallmouth knows, these fish have heart. 

We worked our way back downstream to where we'd entered but continued to catch fish it that water we'd already covered. In fact we got into some of the fastest action right where we'd gotten down to the river, near the raccoon carcass and the heroi... er... "insulin" needles.

Like I said, there's something about urban fishing... I don't quite know what. Perhaps its the juxtaposition. Those stunning redbreast sunfish, giant crappies, and powerful smallmouth bass, living in the shadow of mills and homeless camps, next to heroin needles and shopping carts. It's interesting. And a little sketchy at times. But the luster, if you could call it that, has never diminished. I'm forever a grunge city fisherman as much as I am a wilderness angler.

There was a raccoon peeking out of there before I got the camera out.

Until next time,

Fish for the love of fish.

Fish for the love of places fish live.

Fish for you.

And stay safe and healthy.

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