Fishing report: August 3-August 14

This past week has seen some very strange weather, unpredictable to say the least. Lots of sun, lots of clouds, lots of rain, lots of thunder and lightning. High water, low water; cold water and warm. The weather seemed to change hourly and it was very difficult to plan any fishing activities more than a few hours ahead. Come to think of it, most of the past month has been like this, most of the summer, really. But, hey, it’s New England and, like it or not, the weather’s supposed to be like this. Nothing to do but grin and bear it, do what you can, and soldier on.

Sunday, August 3, Dave Skok and Scott Wessels of the Bear’s Den down in Taunton went on an overnight camping trip to Bumpkin Island. We had intended on leaving early in the afternoon but had to sit out a thunderstorm for a few hours before we could launch the canoes and kayaks from Hull and paddle over to the island. Once launched, we fished our way over the mussel beds and the gravel bar but caught nothing despite a favorable tide and low wind. This area, deep inside Hull Harbor, had been very good to me over the years, a fantastic place, really, but over the past two years, the storms had dramatically altered the structure, covered the mussel beds over with mud, and the area wasn’t nearly as inviting as it used to be. There was baitfish aplenty in the area but no fish feeding on them, none that I could see at any rate.

On Monday, we rose early at first light and fished around the island but again with no success. When the rising tide drove me off the gravel bar leading from Bumpkin to Sunset Point, I returned to my tent and slept for a few hours while Dave and Scott, much hardier souls than I, paddled the canoe over to Grape and Slate Islands and fished there for a few hours. Despite a valiant effort, they managed to raise only one striper and returned in the early afternoon to rest up a bit before breaking camp and heading off again to fish the dropping tide over the mussel beds. I set out ahead of them in Scott’s kayak, fishing the gravel bar rip and the mussel beds on the way back. As I had done on the previous evening so I did do on this one: nothing. Not a hit, not a swirl. And when I tipped the kayak trying to get out of it in about two feet of water I decided that this just wasn’t my day.

The next few days were rainy and windy, good days to tie but not to fish, and I used the time to get caught up on some fly orders, not fishing again until Thursday evening with my friend, Mel Harris. We went out of Crystal Cove in Winthrop on his 21′ Eastern and headed over to the airport flats. Nothing there, so we motored over to Deer Island Rip where rumors had it that there had been some large fish feeding on bunker just a few days before on the falling tide. Again nothing. Off then to Spectacle, Long Island, and Nix’s Mate and back again to the airport flats. Fish were showing up on the fish finder here and there but were holding deep. Deep-holding fish were of little interest to us; we were looking for surface-feeders and we kept looking. And kept finding nothing. After a few hours we decided to call it when it began to rain again. Seemed that all the recent turmoil in the weather patterns were affecting the fish too. I’m convinced that once the weather settles into a more steady pattern that the fishing will improve dramatically.

On Friday afternoon, August 8, my friend Peter Grover called, wanted to go fishing. Me, too, I said. But where? The salt water fishing had been slow and with all the rain a lot of my favorite fresh water places would most likely be murky. We finally settled on the Mystic Lakes in Medford, deep lakes unlikely to be affected by all the rain. We never made it up to the dam on the Lower Mystic as we’d planned because almost as soon as we drove into Medford, the skies began to darken and it began to look like a bad idea to be belly-boating out in the lake somewhat far from shore. We decide instead to fish the Upper Mystic River as it flowed out of Lower Mystic Lake, a stretch I had been wanting to fish for some time and one that allowed us to fish without moving very far from shore in case of a sudden storm descending.

At this spot, easily accessible, the river is only a hundred feet or so between the banks and is one of the prettiest and most fishable stretches of moving water you could possibly hope to find within ten miles of Boston. And it turned out to be one of the most productive stretches as well, giving up lots of small largemouth bass, perch, and bluegills–and one three-pound smallmouth caught on a Gurgler–in the short time we fished it, approximately forty-five minutes, before the rain and lightning drove us off the river. Foiled again by the weather but more than happy to have had the chance to fish a new stretch of water that will, I’m sure, yield up many hours of fishing pleasure in the coming days. I can hardly wait to return.

I did return, a few days later, on Saturday. What a difference a few days make! The storms of the past few days had raised the water level, increased the current flow and turned the water a murky brown. Also, since it was the first nice weekend day in what seems like weeks, the boaters were out in force. I would never have thought 30 foot yachts could navigate the river all the way up from the harbor–but they did, as well as jet skiers, kayaker, and canoeists–and me in my belly-boat, my friend Dave Skok in his canoe. I reminded myself to never fish here again on a weekend. The boat traffic slowed down and finally stopped around 6.30 pm; by this time Dave and I were fishing in the lake itself (Lower Mystic Lake). There were fish rising here and there, some seeming to be big fish, but the action stopped almost as soon as the sun went below the tree line. Still and all, we caught fish–smallmouth bass, white perch, and bluegills. Each of us broke off a large fish as well. Stripers? Possibly, since there is a holdover population in this lake, and there are millions of small herring here at this time.

Sunday, August 10, I held a Striper Strategies class, with two students, John and Barry. The fishing was exceptionally slow. We wet our lines at numerous spots:–Deer Island, Court Road, Short Beach, and Belle Isle Creek–but got not a hit and saw no signs of fish. The water, both inside and outside, was still discolored from storms and because of the very weak tides didn’t clear up as I had hoped it would. As has happened just about every day for weeks now, we got dumped on by rain just as the class was ending. Still and all we had a lot of fun and learned a lot.

Monday, August 11

Stormy today (big surprise). Stayed home and tied flies.

Tuesday, August 12

Today, I fished with my friend Mel Harris aboard the Wind Knot 2. The wind was down and, despite a storm
earlier in the day, we were hoping for some action when we set off around 6 pm. Motoring around the inner harbor, we saw lots of baby bunker on the surface but nothing feeding on them except for a brief blitz of very small bluefish. Mel managed finally catch a very nice striper on a Gurgler but that was the extent of our action. I had only one hit myself

Wednesday, August 13

More rain in the offing today so I waited till late in the day, after the storms were likely to be over, and set out to explore some smaller ponds where I wouldn’t have to fish too far from shore–just in case. In keeping with my plan to fish at least one new place a week, I fished Brown’s Pond in Peabody, where I caught one largemouth bass and a few bluegills in about an hour or so. Brown’s is a pretty little pond, easily accessible and not heavily fished except by a few locals who mostly fish from shore. I also Fished Flax Pond in Lynn for about half an hour, in the cove near Pond Street, sent there by a woman at a local tackle shop where I had stopped to buy some leader material. She told me that it was a good place for large bass and it sure looked like a bassy cove but I managed to get only a few bluegills there. I should have explored it more but there were a lot of kids playing basketball at a court that abuts this cove and it was getting a bit too noisy for me so I called it early and decided to fish the last hour of daylight at Sluice Pond not far away. Maybe I might even catch a trout or two. Sluice is easily accessible from Kernwood Road off Rte 129 and I put in at the boat ramp to fish the cove. There were a few fish rising out in the middle that I thought might be trout but they turned out to be bass, which I found out when I tossed a small Gurgler at them. Nothing large, maybe a pound at the most. But in the half hour or so that I was there before dark descended I caught six or seven and had a lot of fun.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

More rain today in the afternoon. Didn’t think I’d be able to fish today but when my friend Peter Grover called around 4 pm, I said, Sure, let’s go. Somewhere. Anywhere. I had had it in mind to float the Upper Mystic River down to at last the Boston Street Bridge but Peter was held up in traffic and it took him almost two hours to drive from Milton to Winthrop and so we had to revise our plans; not time enough for a longish float. We decided to fish the Lower Mystic Lake, now becoming a favorite of ours it seems. The water was calm, relatively clear, and best of all devoid of boat traffic when we arrived around seven. As we drove along the Mystic Valley Parkway we could see quite a few fish rising, including some very large breaks out in the middle, possibly stripers feeding on the herring in the lake. The surface activity stopped, however, about ten minutes after we got in the water, just as the sun went below the trees, and just as we were maneuvering into an area of concentrated feeding activity. The cessation of surface activity at this time occurred also on the past two evenings I’ve fished this lake. I’m beginning to think that it’s related to the difficulty larger fish seem to have in seeing the small baitfish on the surface when the light is low. At just about the same time the sun sets below the trees, the lake’s surface becomes dimpled all over with small herring, happy herring; the surface looks like raindrops are falling but they’re herring dapping and flipping–and nothing is feeding on them (which is probably why they seem happy). I didn’t get a hit until about 7.50, when I picked up one small largemouth, 2 small smallmouths, and one smallmouth of about two pounds. And these were all close to shore, and all in one area. All on a Gurgler. I made a note to myself to get here some morning at first light to see what the action’s like at that time.

And that’s the news from Lake Woebegone, where all the fishermen are average and all the uncaught fish are above average. And someday it will stop raining.