Happy Thursday! We are officially into our last full week of June which is so hard to believe! This week’s report is full of great stuff from the Jig Heads so let’s just dive right in.
Andy fished Big Pond in Otis reporting the water temps 68-70 degrees. He was able to pick up some bass off of the submerged rocks in the deeper water, 8 to 12 feet, using Ned rigged soft plastics.
Joe was able to get out a couple times this week. First with his wife Meg and fellow Jig Head Ryan Bogli where they hit Wickaboag in West Brookfield. Joe said they fished a known rock pile and were able to get a couple nice largemouth from that along with some nice white and yellow perch. Once the sun went down they went to the flats on the north side of the pond to try a top water bite. They had several blow ups and Ryan was able to land a nice one.
Joe’s second outing was at the Ct River with the boys from Jigs and Bigs and Hookset Hoodlums. They marked a lot of fish in the river around structure, but just couldn’t get them to commit. He says the Oxbow wasn’t much better. The Hookset boys were able to get into the heavy pads in roughly a foot of water and land a couple there.
Moral of the story? The fish are exactly where you would expect. In the deeper water around the structure, and in shallow water where there is shade from the sun.
Ryan also reported on his outing on Friday was with Joe and Meg. He landed a really nice largie off the rock pile on a 6th sense stick bait with a neko weight. Ryan reported that when they went to the north end of the pond as the sun went down, he had the blowup of the year, but completely missed, on a whopper plopper. He said it was the first time in quite some time that he or Joe have seen bass jumping clear out the water in open water, like a carp. After that Ryan threw his plopper back out and got hooked up with a beautiful green back. Definitely a great night out on the OGO boat!
A few days later Ryan went to a small pond throwing tiny micro baits, with a small 4 foot rod. He reported landing some little largies on some 4 pound line.
Berkshire Brett reported that his week was limited to three evening outings. One produced a 17.5 inch pickerel on a spinner bait, but no evidence of that as he jumped off the board as Brett was trying to take a picture. The second outing was another small pond like the first where he hooked into two largemouth and a hefty pumpkin seed, somewhere in the range of 8 to 9 inches. The final outing was on the Housatonic where he hooked up with six or seven pike, all 20 plus inches except for one, the largest being 27.25 inches. Brett also reported hooking into two 15 to 16 inch largemouth. All of his river fish were just before dark on an in-line spinner.
Tim started off his week at South Watuppa Pond in Fall River for a tournament. Unfortunately they were only able to put five bass in the boat. Tim reported his lone bass coming in on weighted soft plastic, on edge of lily pads. His partner struck 4 off the same lily pads on soft jerk bait. He mentioned that high sky’s contributed to a tough day. Next up he went on an adventure Tuesday at Lake Congamond where he reeled in seventeen bass, a mix of solid 2-3 pounders and nibblers. Tim mentioned also that it’s that time of the season where he’s able to use chasebaits and throw rattle traps to entice the majority of the bites. He was also able to get numerous larger fish on weighted soft plastic in the 5-10 ft range. He reported the water temp was 75 degrees and that there was not much action off of the docks.
Nelson was only able to get out one day this week but it reports it as a long day on the water from sunrise to sunset. He was fishing two MAKB tournaments, a Knockout series Round 2 and a Benefit tournament for a fellow angler. Nelson said his morning started off pretty slow and that the bass didn’t seem to want any kind of moving (search) baits. He decided to slow down with some finesse baits, mostly weightless and weighted soft plastics, and began to get some bites that put some bass and pickerel in the kayak. He did catch some bass in the shallow water, but the majority, and the biggest, came from 8-10 feet of water. Nelson reported his best action came from a wind blown point riddled with giant boulders. Although I was able to catch several bass and some nice ones at that. I was not able to catch them big enough to win my KO round. I lost by 1-3/4 inches to Dave Bibo. Great job, Dave! Congrats and good luck in Round 3!!
Shifting gears, in the afternoon/evening Nelson ventured to a “new to me lake” once again. After about an hour on the water and catching a few small bass, he was joined by Shawn the Fisherman. Nelson continued to catch several bass mostly around the 12 inch range, on weightless soft plastics. At just about sunset he made a color and size change to the soft plastic stick bait he was using and that’s when the magic happened. Shortly after that change I hooked into a 19″ bass. A few minutes later after a couple more small bass, he hooked into something much heavier. It ended up being a 21″ bass that looked more like a football and his last fish for the day. An amazing ending to an amazing day on the water!
Shawn the Fisherman reported that Saturday was a day-long benefit tournament to a fellow MAKB member that lost a lot of gear when his kayak flipped recently. I made the trip to one of his haunts up ‘da Shires with the world-renowned Chris Debari in tow. He said they battled 10-15 mph wind for most of the morning, and landed a mix of smallmouth and largemouth on ned-rigged creatures and weedless stick worms. Most of the fish were deeper, holding between 5-10 feet of water, and seemed to prefer a slower presentation.
Shawn said that Chris’s day ended after lunch, and that’s when he met up with Nelson at a smaller pond towards the center of the state. He continued to throw weighted creature baits, and seemed to be tapping into an endless well of 10-12″ nibbler largemouth just like Nelson until dusk. At that point, he switched to a weedless stick worm and hauled in a 19″ and 21″ couple of SLOBS. Congrats to him on the pin fish/ lunker for the tourney!
Monday, Shawn fished a few hours in the morning at the CT River Oxbow in Easthampton with a motley crew. Bobby Roast Beef, Joe from Old Glory Outdoors, Delirious Angler, and Bill and Andrew all duked it out for 3 hours. Andrew and Bill were the only folks to land any black bass, with Andrew landing the largest, and was able to stand tall amongst all the trash talking. (And there was a lot.) Congrats to him, and you’ll be sure to hear more about this day on Jigs and Bigs.
Don’t forget the Jigs & Bigs podcast has new episodes airing every Tuesday! This week’s episode was awesome as usual and has turned into something I look forward to every week. I listen on Spotify but you can find it on Apple, Amazon, Google, Podchaser, and MANY MORE free platforms. Go and give it a listen!
Get out there and fish this week folks. Good luck, and tight lines!
Wild Woman 