We all know what can happen when fishing in late fall: feast or famine, either a whiz-bang-pow lights-out kind of day or it’s a struggle.
For most of us at yesterday’s mystery event on Oldham, it was more of the latter.
It was for me, at least. Knowing that a 54-degree water temp was still relatively warm and that some fish would still be active shallow, I focused on a deeper bite, spending most of my truncated day bouncing around to the myriad humps and flats that litter the lake. I did briefly try the weeds out back, but without any sign of life, I moved back to deeper water and focused on spots that have produced well for me in the past.
The fish just weren’t there like I’d expected. I did catch three, though, and I lost a few others, which unfortunately is what kept me out there.
Around 1 PM, shivering from the cold (I under-dressed because it was supposed to be sunny all day, which was another lie in a long stream of lies from those losers we call weathermen), I looked at first place and determined that the payout for second or third wasn’t worth the misery…so I quit. And I don’t regret it one bit. Haha.
For this event we also ran optional smallie and pickerel lunker pools. The smallmouth population there is small, and in my experience nonexistent until recently. As such, no one caught a smallmouth, so all those who opted in will be refunded.
But some big pickerel were caught, including two giants by Joseph Daddeo, who seems to always catch giant pickerel and whose 25.25-incher at this event bested the field. Eight pickerel were submitted, four of which were Joe’s…
He is Joe Exotic, the Pickerel King!
We’re only paying out three spots for this one, and third goes to Joe as well, with 77.50 inches.
As I mentioned above, fall fishing can be feast or famine. For two anglers, outlaws from Rhode Island, it was all feast!
Sometimes having no experience on a body of water is an advantage, and I think that played a role here. While a lot of us used our experience and focused on specific spots, they covered water, and it paid off BIG time.
Throwing a ned rig and slinging a jig, Greg Krasnowiecki hauled in five bass that maxed out at 89.50, while Chris Catucci made even that beefy limit look slim by putting up a new club record of 96.50! Chris caught his fish on a chatterbait and jig. Bass fishing 101, and we got schooled by both of them!
Chris also had the biggest of the event at 21 inches, with Greg having a 20.75 that was just a hair’s width away from 21 inches.
Great job, guys! Very very impressive.
Final results can be found here.
That was likely the last tournament of the year for us, unless we have a seriously warm day in the near future. And if it is the end, no worries, we had a great year and next year is going to be insane!
Those of you who live in western MA will be happy.
