Checking In With the Locals

I've been out and about chasing striped bass an false albacore lately it seemed necessary to check in with the locals yesterday. The home waters, the places I could walk to if I had to. Simple stuff. Brook trout. Bass. Pickerel. Perch.

It's time for eggs on the rivers. Brook and Brown trout are in various stages of spawning. Some are pre-spawn still, some are on the redds, and others have already done there thing and moved on, even with the warm temperatures of late. Egg patterns work really well during and after the spawn.

After the brookies had had enough of me and quite biting I went to the lake to see what I could get there.

The perch and smallmouth did not disappoint at all, but I really wanted to end the day with some toothy critters, so I went to a pond where the only predator fish are of the Esox variety. Sometimes one fish is all it takes to make your day, and in this case that's what happened. I only got one pickerel, but I'll be damned if it wasn't a nice one. I watched it react to the fly when it hit the water, turn, and wake 10 feet for it. The take was exactly as aggressive as one would expect from a big pickerel that moved that far for the fly. It inhaled my fly so well that I actually hooked in right at the apex of the gill plate. The hook point was actually buried on the outside of the gill plate and the hook shank was on the inside. My line was going right through the fish's jaws. Thank God for fluorocarbon. This was easily the biggest pickerel I've caught in two, maybe three years.