First on the docket for Noah and I one mild mid spring day was a stop to a dive shop, because he needed more weights. The man had just purchased his first wetsuit, and I'd already made myself a side character in his quest to get really good at catching fish while in the water with them. We'd done this before about two years ago, and we could kind of see the potential then but somehow didn't really take it as seriously as we should have. Now, though, Noah was dead set on becoming some sort of marine mammal... a seal-man, if you will. Though my time was a bit too occupied with teaching other people how to stab carp in the face with tiny feathered weapons, I wanted to take part in this process as much as possible. And so off we were headed to buy lead to sink Noah. Part of free diving is fighting both your own buoyancy and that of a wetsuit, weight belts with weight proportional to your own body mass help make reaching depth and staying down possible without unnecessarily fighting. From the dive shop it was back to Noah's, where we had to hook up the boat. His landlord was there doing some cleaning up around the property
"Hey Noah, how are you?" I hard him ask, to which Noah responded "Not bad, just taking the boat out today". His landlord responded "just stay away from the Straight of Hormuz". Inaudibly to both in the truck, I quietly snorted a laugh. When Noah hopped back in I turned to him and asked if he knew any good launches on the straight. We set off; not for Iran, Oman, or the UAE, but southeastern Connecticut instead, intent to ignore wars that shouldn't be happening in the cool embrace of clear, man made lake waters filled with a mix of mostly non-native species.
At the launch we spent maybe as much as an hour fiddling with equipment, culminating with the motor refusing to start, forcing us to operate solely off of the trolling motor. This wasn't really what we wanted out of the day, ideally, but it was vaguely functional. we made our way to the nearest rocky reef surrounded by deeper water; an ideal setup for snorkel fishing. I was un-wet-suited and just there as a spotter, basically, though I had a couple fly rods and would make some casts as I moseyed around the periphery of Noah's dive fishing and made sure he didn't kill himself somehow.
Snorkel and dive fishing isn't an entirely un-tried strategy, but it is very close to it. Most people, when prompted, are pretty baffled by the logistics of going into the water with a hook and line, swimming right up to your query, and trying to feed them and will just assume you are spear fishing. That, of course, is illegal in inland waters. There is basically zero information to come upon when it comes to underwater hook and line angling. Just a handful of videos here and there and whatever you can glean from spear fishing that couple be applicable. So, Noah is very much in untested territory here... or uncharted waters, if you will. To him- or really to the both of us -that is a hugely enticing proposition. The opportunity to learn more about the species we target, learn new ways to catch them, and get to observe and document more about their habitat and behavior without the aid of any tech like drones, forward facing sonar, or underwater cameras. We'd just figure it out with what our bodies were physically capable of. There are plenty of people that have done snorkeling to observe fish, and quite a few that have done it while people actively fished to the fish they were observing. There are far, far fewer that have meshed the two together in a comprehensive way.
I motored around circles while Noah went down, scoured for fish, and occasionally came up with one. Had we just anchored off a ways we may have hooked more than he was doing. The notable advantage of angling from in the water and up close is that you can pick out the ones you really want to catch with exceptional ease... if your target is to catch sunfish, you can pick out the largest, the prettiest, or that crazy hybrid. Fewer fish with sore lips is never a bad thing in my opinion. But how would larger, more generally considered difficult species go?
At one point Noah came up to the surface and I heard a muffled scream through his snorkel. He's hooked a decent largemouth and was being forced to give chase rather than break off (an issue he has since rectified, but it was a funny thing to have to "be the drag" on this occasion). Watching your wetsuit-clad buddy give chase to a bass underwater is just hysterical. Even funnier still, watching lake home owners react to seeing him pop up at random places out in the lake holding various fishes. We picked and poked a ways off of one particular shoreline finding bass and crappie. At one point I watched a smallmouth repeatedly jumping for a fully submerged Noah- a perspective that probably pales significantly in comparison from actually seeing the fish jump from below as Noah was in that moment. That is something we have got to catch on video at some point.
I was picking off a few bass here and there, as well as one crappie and some sunfish. But Noah far outdid that, even in a scenario where I had great visibility and was mostly sight fishing. It is quite clear, and becoming more so, that snorkel fishing may at times be just flat out wildly more effective than fishing from above the surface. That's kind of crazy, given the limitations of having to be very close to the fish. Some of them just don't care, and some will even attack you. As far was the ones that do get spooked, we'll just figure it out, won't we?
Thank you to my Patrons; Erin, David, John, Elizabeth, Brandon, Christopher, Shawn, Mike, Sara, Franky, Geof, Luke, Noah, Justin, Sean, Tom, Mark, Jake, Chris, Oliver, oddity on Display, Sammy, and Cris & Jennifer, Hunter, Gordon, Thomas, Trevor, Eric, Evan, Javier, Ryan, Dar, Eric, and Collin for making Connecticut Fly Angler possible. If you want to support this blog and access more informative content, look for the Patreon link at the top of the right side-bar in web version!
