I went ice fishing for the last time this season (landing 2 perch and 2 pickerel) on March 2nd while scouting for potential spots to go the next day.
There was plenty of ice on the ponds that I checked at the time, but the rainfall that we had over the evening ate it away like acid, so conditions were sketchy at best (and miserably sloppy) by the next day.
Since then, I have had to focus my efforts on open water fishing.
(NOTE: I had hoped to get one last chance to go ice fishing in Savoy last Saturday, following a prolonged cold snap during the preceding week. Initially, when I went to check the pond in question, I was heartened to see its entire surface was covered. But then my heart plummeted when I discovered that the 3" of ice had the consistency of a slushy drink. On the plus side, I did get out cross-country skiing on the Ashuwillticook Bike Trail twice that weekend)
Unfortunately, when I fished the rivers in my neck of the woods this month, I found the waters to be fast, cold and sterile as the Dead Sea.
As a result, my only successful forays this month have involved catching wild brookies on a small "old reliable" stream in Adams and landing hold over rainbows on Fish Pond (a/k/a Windsor Lake) in North Adams.
However, the DFW has been stocking up this way this past week, and I thought I might finally be able to catch a river trout (my first since December) today, especially since my son had caught some nice browns on the Hoosic in Cheshire earlier this week.
So it was with high hopes that I headed south to Pittsfield this morning.
My first stop was at the Greek Church in Pittsfield around 10 AM to purchase some goodies at their annual Easter pastry sale.
Then I was off to do some serious fishing on a variety of streams/ponds between Pittsfield and home.
Over the next six hours, I tried the West, NW and East Branches of the Housatonic Silver Lake, Cheshire Lake, the South Branch of the Hoosic and even Fish Pond.
Notwithstanding the sunny and relatively mild weather (which was about 35 degrees when I started and 50 when I finished) . . . I had nary a nibble on any of them.
The only place I managed to catch anything today was on a small private pond that was drained last fall, and only has about a foot of water left in it.
There, despite the incredibly shallow conditions, a fair number of rainbows are still hunkered down in one slightly deeper spot - - from which I was able to hook and reel in eight 9" to 12" rainbows (one for each of the bodies of water that I fished today) in relatively short order
But it looks like I'll need to wait till April before finally breaking my drought (knock on wood) in terms of catching a fish from a river (vs. brook/pond).
