I've had on Fish Pond (a/k/a Windsor Lake) in North Adams this season.
On the plus side, it was a beautiful day, and I did get a chance to use my ice skates for the first time this season.
The weather was blue bird skies and cold - - 27 degrees when I arrived at 9:30 AM, slowly creeping up to 37 (according to my car thermometer) around 3 PM - - although it must have been cooler on the Pond itself, since there was no water on the surface of the ice and my holes slowly froze over - - and then dropping down again when I left around 4:30 PM.
The surface of the ice was nice and hard and fairly smooth (albeit "knobbly" in spots), but once you chopped through the top, there was about 9 or 10 inches of "mealy" ice underneath.
As for the fishing itself, it was painfully slow. I narrowly managed to elude a skunking, with one good-sized sunfish on a jig and one smallish pickerel on a tip up, but I think it was the first time I've fished there this season that I didn't catch at least one rainbow.
.
It wasn't just slow for me. I heard two guys on the far end of the Pond say they hadn't got a hit all day. Another group of seven (four guys and three kids) near me caught one smallish pickerel on a tip up the whole time that I was there.
The only folks who seemed to have any luck were a father and his five year old son, who landed eight or nine good-sized perch on tip ups, although (ironically) they were hoping for a trout.
After I left the Pond, I made a quick trip to try fishing a local stream that feeds the North Hoosic, but, as I feared, the water proved to be high and cold, and I didn't see hide nor hair (fin nor scale?) of any fish.
However, on my way back to the parking lot, I saw my first fly fishers of spring - - a youngish couple from the Boston area who were heading down to the river to give it a go as I headed home. We chatted for a few minutes, and I wished them luck before heading to my car and driving home.
