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Summertime in the BelgradesContentsfor Printing Article Summaries |
Wild Weather and Hot Fishing!
by Mike Guarino PHEW! What a week. You name it and it happened in the Belgrades. The big story was the awesome and sometimes dramatic weather changes that caused anglers to scramble on and off the water. It all started on Tuesday after a beautiful day of smallmouth fishing on Great Pond. The smallmouth were extremely active taking top water poppers at dawn and crushing Senkos after the sun got high in the sky. The lake was dead calm and the sunrise was a brilliant hot pink and lavender. That should have been an indication of things to come if you believe in the old saying, "Red sky at night sailors delight; red sky in the morning sailors take warning." It was just a few hours later, while watching the Nor'easters play a little league softball game, that the temperatures dropped about 20° and a wicked storm blew in fast! For a minute there Coach Aaron and I thought it was going to hail. Well, that storm might have wreaked some havoc on folk's docks and boats, but it sure did jumpstart the fishing for the rest of the week. We lost our top water bite for a few days, but the storm stacked the smallies up off rocky points. Trout trollers were also rejoicing because the brown trout on Great Pond, salmon on Long Pond and the brookies on Salmon and McGrath got active too. Doug McCafferty over at Whisperwood Lodge said his customers were having good luck on browns and brookies. On Great Pond Rapalas in black/silver and copper/black were good choices last week fished anywhere from 3 to 5 colors of lead core down. Speaking of trout, the first mayflies showed up, hanging on the screen that wraps our front porch. I think that's the best way to figure out what bugs are hatching around here. Just around dusk, flip on the porch light and wait a few minutes! The arrival of the mayflies sends both brook trout and brook trout fishermen into a frenzy, so if you see someone driving too fast toward one of the many brookie ponds in the area, cut them some slack. They just can't help it! Mayfly hatches mean rising brook trout, and fly fishing for brookies is a tradition some of us take very serious. Tip of the WeekYou know you're getting older when your dentist is younger than you are! Well, that sad piece of reality did have a silver lining for me during my last trip to dentist chair. My dentist was kind enough to inform me that my teeth are on a slow path to destruction simply because of all the monofilament line I bit through. It's a bad habit I started as a little kid and continued until this year. A simple 99¢ pair of nail clippers that I bought over to Marden's Discount, tied to a 3 foot piece of fishing line and draped around my neck has become the most useful tool in the boat. By keeping a cutting tool handy, you'll use it more often and avoid the short cut of biting the line with your teeth. Lure of the WeekBomber Pro Long A — When the smallmouth or largemouth bass can't be found on their beds, you can bet there somewhere nearby. The Bomber comes in a variety of different colors and sizes and is a staple that should be in every fisherman's tackle box. This stick bait works well as a combination search bait used to cover a lot of water and as a jerk bait that works great when fished slow and twitched across rock piles or dropoffs. Lately, the Chartreuse Flash/Orange Belly has been a hot color! Mike Guarino can be reached at | ||
