52 Miles

I bike a lot. 60 miles is not an atypical week for me. But today I wanted to go further. I chose a route based on good mountain biking trails, back roads, access points to the Airline Trail, and potential fishing spots. The ending point would be the Willimantic River, and the entirety of the trip would total a little over 52 miles. On the way I passed a dog walker and he asked me "where you fishing?" and I replied "all over the place". That was the most accurate possible answer in my mind.

The goal was not only to bike a long ways, but to fish a bunch of different bodies of water. I fished 11 different ponds and streams, starting only one hundred yards from my house. The first two ponds gave up sunfish. One little red breast and one big bluegill.

The first two streams I fished each gave up a nice brown trout. The first was a classic lateral line take, I made the cast downstream and adjacent to the fish and it felt it and turned around to grab the stimulator.

The next spot was a big weedy pond, and I didn't really want to stay long so all I got was a small bluegill.

The next two streams only gave up little fallfish, which was fine with me because I wasn't expecting much else from them.

The fifth river is one I had never fished. It turned out to be loaded with gorgeous red breast sunfish.

Fifteen minutes later I was in Willimantic, and the river of the same name proved to be full of panfish. I was hoping for carp or bass, but I did get one pumpkinseed-redbreast hybrid, and that was pretty cool. I ate my lunch there as well, pumpkin seeds and mandarin oranges.

Hybrid

On my way home I made one last stop, and I caught a brown and a rainbow on big fanwing dries.

Was that 52 miles worth it? For the fish, not really. For the whole experience, absolutely!