I travelled to North Adams late this morning to fish some streams and a pond.
When I arrived around 11 AM, it was cloudy and about 60 degrees.
First, I fished Hudson Brook in the Natural Marble Bridge State Park for 20 minutes or so, during which I caught an 8" brookie and an 11" brown.
Then I walked back down to the North Hoosic, and fished without success below the entrance of the Park.
Next, I drove to the roll dam and waded downstream from there.
Along the way, I picked up one 10" rainbow around Old Glory Rock, rounding out my hat trick (1 brookie/1 brown/1 rainbow) for the day.
After continuing down past the Eclipse Mill dam (with no further strikes) and wrapping up around 1 PM, I walked back up to my car and decided to try my luck at Fish Pond (Windsor Lake) between 1:30 and 2:30 PM.
During that time, the temperature had started to drop (to about 55) the wind picked up (with gusts up to about 20 or 25 mph) and, eventually, it started to rain.
While that was going on, the fishing was slow, but I managed to cobble together a modest catch - - six sunfish (5 small/1 large) and three perch.
However, more interesting than what I caught at Fish Pond was how I landed my largest sunfish there.
After sidling clout onto a fallen tree that lay in the water, and casting into a large Y-shaped cleft between two boughs, I felt a decent tug and reeled in a decent-sized (8") sunfish.
What was odd was that I had NOT hooked the fish.
Instead, the sunfish had already swallowed someone else's hook, with a length of snelled line attached.
At the end of the snelled line was a small swivel.
Somehow or other, I had hooked the swivel - - and hauled in the sunfish along with the line to which it was attached.
I've had some odd catches before, but this was a first for me.
I've reeled in crayfish that latched onto my bait but refused to let go, and golf-ball sized rocks that my hook and line had wrapped around.
I've snagged snapped lines with fish already on them.
I even hauled in two fish on a single hook and line once while ice fishing - - after a small perch (with my shiner in its mouth) had swum "past" my hook and "up" the line of my tip up to escape from a big pickerel which had impaled itself on my hook while chasing it.
But this was the first time I can recall landing a fish by hooking the swivel attached to another line.
