Breaking the Ice

It only happens once or twice a winter, so I know it's really cold when I'm travelling across the Tappan Zee bridge on my way to work and the mighty Hudson River is frozen over so that it looks more like the Arctic Ocean. During this past week, I wasn't holding out too much hope that there'd be any chance for fishing any time soon. George informed me that the Housatonic was frozen from side-to-side when he checked Thursday night. Thank goodness for some fifty degree temps and a good soaking rain on Saturday. The Housatonic was ready to be fished today, and fish it we did.

After paddling through and around some 1-2" ice flows from the launch on over to the Derby side, I felt that old familiar thump on my fifth cast, and a few moments later I had my first striped bass of 2014 alongside my kayak. It was the beginning of a very solid day of fishing for George and I. The most encouraging part of the day was that the bass were consistently bigger than our recent outings. I saw more quality size readings on my fishfinder and the majority of fish we caught were over 18". There were much fewer of the 12-13" fish so common in these schools. Although we didn't catch any keeper-size fish, there were several caught by other boats. Paulie had several on his boat that were keepers or very close (you can check out their photos on the Bobby J's Bait & Tackle Facebook site).

A gusty wind made it a little tough to hold our position over the fish in the river channel, but we were fortunate in that most of the best fishing was happening along both shorelines. In fact, it's been a while since I saw so many shore fishermen lining the Shelton shoreline. There were 20+ guys lined up and haulin' in bass after bass.

It was nice to get out there and get after 'em again and it was a fun start to the Striper Pursuit for 2014!

22-incher

My best of the day, a 23 1/2-incher caught just before we left.

Happy New Year!

Jeff