I got out for a while this afternoon.
The morning portents were not auspicious - -the thermometer read 28 degrees and I spent a couple minutes scraping my car's windshield at 8 AM this morning - - but it was sunny and up to 50 degrees by the time I was able to start fishing a little before 2 PM.
My preference would have been the North Hoosic, but the river was raging from all the rain we've had the past few days, so I had to come up with an aletrnate plan.
First up was Hudson Brook in the Natural Marble Bridge State Park in North Adams.
I hiked up to the small waterfall at the bottom of the chasm below the NMB, and fished two spots, each about the size of a parking space, which produced two brookies (each about 7") and five browns (ranging from 8" to 11").
Next, I headed to Fish Pond (a/k/a Windsor Lake), also in North Adams, and fished the end near the beach.
An hour of fishing resulted in two browns (one 9" and one 11"), a big sunfish (which fought better than both of the browns combined), innumerable leaves (which led to a lot of "false strikes"), and my first snail on a line (adhered to one of the leaves that I reeled in).
Then I headed home for a cook out - - and had an early dinner featuring five pork chops, some homemade kimchi (by my oldest daughter), a bottle of Bell's Robust Porter and a date cake for dessert.
