Today, my younger son and I headed south to fish central Berkshire County.
The weather was sunny with blue skies and warm (70 to 80 degrees), but the streams were still pretty well recharged from our recent rains.
We started on the East Housatonic below the Depot Street dam in Dalton around 10 AM.
There my son scored an 8" brown and a 9" rainbow, while I reeled in a 7" brookie and a fat 12" brown.
Then we headed downstream to below the East Housatonic Street dam but didn't find any action there.
To add insult to injury, I am pretty sure (in retrospect) that's where my box of favorite lures fell unnoticed from my vest pocket.
(I don't fish with lures very often, but when I do, those were the ones that I liked to use).
Next, we drove to Pittsfield, and tried our luck at Silver Lake, where my son (who was hoping to catch one of the resident koi) landed a couple small (10" to 11") largemouth bass, while I eked out a pair of sunfish.
Our next-to-last stop was the West Housatonic by the Iron Man machine shop on Hungerford Street, where I was fortunate enough to catch a 14" rainbow (just below the "upper" bridge), a rock bass (a first for me on this stream) and a small brown (both behind the machine shop itself) and a couple small perch (under the "main" bridge).
Finally, we fished the Northwest Housatonic on Wahconah Street.
I started below the dam, where angling conditions were as close to "shooting fish in a barrel" as I have ever seen because the water was practically boiling with small yellow perch. There I caught a dozen perch, plus eight decent sunfish and four rock bass (one good sized).
Then I hiked up above the dam to join my son.
Upon cresting the dam, I noticed that the silty stream floor above it was covered here and there with dead fish (mostly perch, I think), generally in the 7" to 10" range.
Upon approaching my son (who was about a football field upstream), I learned that, while I was down below the dam, he had hooked and briefly played a big carp, but it had snapped his line.
While I watched, my son spotted, and cast toward, several more large carp, but none of them seemed interested in hitting his line.
Eventually, weary of watching the carp play hard to get as they cruised the shallow waters, nonchalantly leaving contrails of dust in their wake, my son and I headed home around 4 PM.
