On The Water 12/30/05

1. For the past few weeks, the holiday shopping fervor, snow and frigid conditions have pretty much put an end to the fishing, with the exceptions being ice fishing, winter striped bass in the Thames River and around a few warm water discharges in the region. Despite the recent heavy rain, hardcore anglers continue to fish for stripers in the Thames and venture out onto wet, potentially deadly ice. The melt down and predicted warm temperatures will probably improve conditions on the Naugatuck and Shetucket Rivers for broodstock Atlantic salmon as a side benefit.
2. I wouldn’t go on the ice until things freeze tight again. Even though it may look safe, unseen springs and in-flowing water can make for some dangerous situations. You can bet some crazies will test things out despite the potential for disaster.
3. As of last week, the Thames River was producing some very high numbers of small striped bass as it always does during the Christmas season. At that time 20-degree nights and freezing days were starting to close the harbor under a cap of ice. The heavy rains earlier this week have pretty much taken care of that situation. The problem right now and for a couple days may be from flowing chunks of ice that have been washed downstream from impoundments. With high enough river flow, some very large chunks of ice could be floating through Norwich Harbor, so keep a watchful eye to the water upstream at all times but especially just after a thawing rain.
4. Water temperatures are still fairly mild, probably in the high 30s. The stripers always seem to hit better early on in the winter, before temperatures bottom out. Very often, during warm winter rains like we just had, local anglers who fish after dark in Norwich Harbor catch some of the largest stripers of the winter. It happens every year. Jack Balint of the Fish Connection noted that the rains haven’t seemed to slow the catch rates any, saying the catch numbers he’s hearing about are among the best in years.
5. My friend Eric Covino made two trips last week and caught something like 135 fish one trip with two other people and 165 fish the second outing with just his son Jim. All the fish were taken by jigging with Fin-S Fish or Zoom Fluke teasers on barely enough of a lead head to sink the lures down to where the fish are concentrated. Eric said he caught his fish last week between the Pequot Bridge and the drawbridge at Poquetanuck Cove. However, more recently the bass action has been concentrated from the harbor on down to the oil docks and almost to the casino. The fish are small, but Eric said they were larger than the tons of dinks he and I caught three or four weeks ago down river in New London, before the bass decided to finally move up stream for the winter season. He said the fish he caught the other day were topping off at 24 to 26 inches as opposed to the 20 to 22 inches most anglers have been reporting lately.
6. There’s always a chance to hook into fish that may even weigh up to 25 or 30 pounds, but they are rare during the winter fishery. It is pretty much a large numbers of small fish game that’s great fun with light tackle. The best tactic is to start in the harbor and try to locate fish on the depth finder screen or by watching who is catching fish in the other boats. If the bass are not present in large, thick schools in Norwich Harbor, continue downstream until huge, block like masses of bass appear on the screen. Even though there may be thousands of stripers under the boat they are not all turned on by any means, so chasing single fish or small schools is usually a waste of time. We don’t even start fishing unless the stripers under the boat are marked in a band that is a minimum of five or ten feet thick off the bottom.
7. Look for schools with finger like marks from individual fish coming off the top of the school. This image is preferable to those that look like a solid block, because it means that at least the fish on the top of the school are moving around, which is usually an indication they will be hitting to some extent. The solid blocks, or “buildings” as we refer to them are most common on high pressure bluebird days, when the fish are turned off and believe it or not, it can be difficult to get a fish to bite if the schools are stacked so tightly they are gray lining.
8. If you can take the cold, fishing is always better for larger fish after the sun sets, particularly when high tide takes place well after dark. Always try to fish the top of the high tide and ebb if possible.
9. Chris Fulton of Stratford Bait and Tackle said he had a few customers who were catching broodstock Atlantic salmon below the Derby Dam on Crocodile Spoons but that was about it in his area. Joe Balint of the Fish Connection said a few of his hardcore salmon fishermen were still trying to catch them from the Shetucket River but no word on what the rains have done to water flows below the Scotland Dam. It may be running too hard to fish for a few days. However, if the temperatures remain balmy the salmon will probably be catchable once the flows drop to manageable levels. Jack Balint said that it sounded like the rains have improved salmon fishing due to the more open waters and the increase in water temperature from high run off and snow melt this relatively warm storm has produced.
10. For the time being that’s about it. There have been a couple people talking about steelhead fishing up at Salmon River in Pulaski, New York and another friend is champing at the bit to go smelt fishing at an ice camp he fished last year in Maine. Angling options will broaden once the lakes freeze safe and thick.