Andrew, Georgie and I launched from Portland around 7:30. The plan was to cover some water and find some cat and schoolie holes and maybe find a pike or two along the way. Everyone must still be on the Housy because we saw only one other boat all day long. We sure covered some water today, the GPS said we did 55 miles :eek2: We headed south first to check some spots. We found fish on the electronics and confirmed that they were cats with the Aqua-Vu but we just couldn't get them to bite. Boat control was nearly impossible with a stiff wind out of the NW and stronger than normal currents with the snow melt coming down river. We tried a couple of spots but decided to run north instead of further south. We hit the Mattabeset river and went way up river into some very fishy looking areas. Once we were out of the wind, it was really pleasant out. We hit the area hard for about an hour with nothing to show for our efforts. A few more miles up the river and we found a pretty big ball of cats in about 30 feet of water. I dropped the Aqua-Vu down to take a look and sure enough they were cats... And some big ones too! :biggrin: Andrew and George used jig heads tipped with shiners and I used a heddon Sonar. It wasn't fast and furious but we managed to pull a few decent fish out of the crowd.
A little farther up river we finally found a good bunch of stripers, these were in about 20 feet of water. They weren't interested in anything we had... :rolleyes: We eventually made it up to the trash plant in Hartford. We managed a few hits and one pike and that was it. On ou way back down we snuck in to White Oaks to see how the ice was holding up. I was surprised to see just how much ice was still there. Looks like a good base for when it finally gets cold this week. We motored over to one of my brush piles, breaking the ice as we went.
We jigged for a while in a couple of likely spots but again... Nothing. Oh well, it sure beats sitting home doing nothing. We spent a total of close to 8 hours on the water and covered some serious ground. I lost count of how many eagles we saw along the way but I know it was over a dozen...
Here is a
video clip taken with the Aqua-Vu . The quality isn't great but at least you get an idea of how many cats there were :biggrin:
