This morning, after completing my usual round of Saturday morning errands, my younger son and I loaded up my trusty SUV and headed south to my natal village of Chicopee to target some shad and small mouth.
It was an absolutely gorgeous day - - sunny, blue skies and I believe I saw the thermometer hit 78 degrees at one point. Definitely the best weather we've had in over a month.
Along the way, we stopped to drop off the flower boxes for the various family cemetery plots scattered en route.
We arrived right around 12 noon and parked on Granby Road a little upstream from the Davitt Bridge.
I ended up catching four small mouth (one 9", one 12", one 13" and one 18" bruiser).
Alas, while my son has outfished me on many an occasion, this just wasn't his day and he went fishless, although (unlike me) he at least spotted some shad, but they just didn't respond to the shad darts that he threw their way.
(The two shad fishermen that we spoke to at one point complained that the fishing was unusually poor because the water was too low).
After also trying without success urther downstream below the railroad trestle, my son and I took a side trip to check out a pond that I had found on a map off Terimar Avenue.
It turned out to be a private pond, fenced off and only accessible to the handful of houses that line the shore.
We spotted a few sunfish from the road, and a woman fishing the Pond from her yard said there were also bass in there, although I would be surprised if that were true, because it looked so shallow.
Next, it was off to Arnold's Meats to replenish the family larder with exotic foods we cannot easily procure back home in the Berkshires, and then on to Chik Filet (which we also don't have up our way) for my son to grab a quick sandwich before the drive home.
On the way home, I stopped to fish the East Branch of the Westfield in Cummington, near where the Swift River joins it.
(My son was beat, and stayed in the car).
A little over half hour or so of fishing yielded two rainbows (one 13" and one 15"), before I trudged back to the car and we headed home.
All in all a satisfactory (if exhausting) day.
