Schoolies Gettin' Schooled

For the 1st day of December, it was certainly a perfect day for fishing today. Some early chill and cloudiness didn't stop George and I from getting out on the Housatonic River by about 8:30am. The forecast was for warming temperatures so we knew the morning might be a little bit uncomfortable, but the fishing warmed up way before the weather as we were both on fish within the first couple casts. The first hour was absolutely smokin' as we began stringing together long runs of catching fish on consecutive casts. I'm pretty sure George said he was on a run of about 15 straight at one point before he finally  missed one. I had a couple runs of maybe 3 or 4 straight, but was also playing around with my camera which was distracting me at bit from the fishing. About 45 minutes or so in, I caught what turned out to be my biggest fish of the day a nice fat

25-incher that fought real hard against my ultra-light gear. We fished about a 2-mile stretch of the river for the day and my fish finder showed many big schools of fish with some larger fish mixed in. With the dam running from Derby, there was a perfect current and we were able to drift for long stretches and just concentrate on fishing with nowhere near as much paddling as we had to do two weeks back down at the mouth of the river.

25" Schoolie Striper

For the day I ended up with 42 fish, with at least another dozen that managed to get off before I could get them to the yak. As usual, George easily caught double the amount of fish I did. He had to leave for a party about 2 hours before I did, but he was somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 fish by the time he left. These fish are very aggressive right now and we had a a blast taking advantage of it.

We also made a new friend "Russ" along the way today who was having some trouble mastering the zoom fluke jigging technique, but I offered him a couple tips and he was off and running. By the end of the day he had landed about 15 as well. Great fishing with ya Russ!

When he told me his name was Russ, it made me think about my old fishin' buddy and brother-in-law Russ "Uncle Rascal" Renzulli. Wish you were here old friend. You are still in my heart and especially when I'm on the water.

Peace,
Jeff