My younger son and I went to Greek Fest in Pittsfield today. (Love those dolmenis, gyros, moussaka, baklava, et al, along with the bazouki music)
While we were down there, we took a side trip to fish Onota (off the Dan Casey Drive causeway, which was partially "flooded" with water forming a big puddle on one side of the road) and, on the ride home, stopped to fish a backwater of Cheshire Lake (just before it goes over a small dam to form the headwaters of the South Branch of the Hoosic).
Weather was nice (mostly sunny, 70 degrees), although the water was high, and the fishing only so-so: we ended up catching one dink perch (at Onotoa) and a bunch of sunfish (at Cheshire).
What was interesting was the non-piscine catch of the day.
Over the years I have hooked all kinds of animate and inanimagte objects in the water (rocks, tree limbs, birds nests of line - - sometimes with lures attached, bicycles, shopping carts, and even a bread truck once), and reeled in a few more (nuts and bolts,rocks, crayfish, and even a mink icefishing last winter), but I had a new "first" today.
While fishing the backwater at Cheshire this afternoon, I cast my line (with a few split shot attached) into the "pond" and slowly reeled it in.
As I did, I felt a weight that I assumed was a stick.
But as the end of my line broke the surface, I discovered I had caught a mussel.
Upon closer examination, I learned the mussel was not hooked, but had glommed on to my line and refused to let go - - sort of like the crayfish I have caught in the past. The difference was that, while crayfish have grabbed onto my bait, the mussel had closed the ends of its shell to my line itself, about 8 inches above the hook, and just above one of the split shot.
It took a few times of raising and lowering my line to tap the mussel against a concrete abutment to get it to release my line.
Unfortunately, in the process, I accidentally cracked the shell, so instead of releasing my catch unharmed, I ended up cutting up the "meat" and using it for bait.
Note: It turns out sunfish like mussel meat.