Fishing Season 2k15!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Thread starter NCStateFisher
- Start date
Went to Long Pond (Belgrade Lakes) in Maine for three day trip with nothing crazy to report. Caught a hand ful of dink smallies and that was it. Water level was down 8" and was rained out one of my three days. Tried for Pike for a half hour before dark with an 10" trout hard swimbait and had around a 30" pike take a few bites but somehow didnt hook it.
Erie was okay this weekend, not really any groundbreaking catches except one but still did alright. Saturday we trolled for walleye for a while and didn't bring up anything but an average Drum (~20" 5 lb), a dink yellow perch (which a seagull took from the back of the boat before I could release it lol) and two 12-14" white bass. After giving up on trolling Saturday we decided to (yellow) perch fish for about an hour and we boated 8 nice ones and a decent white perch jumped the hook at the boat, those 8 only had enough meat to be an appetizer for dinner, this is why I like walleye better, more and tastier meat per fish haha. Sunday, while I only caught 4 fish all day, was just as good if not better than Saturday. While three of the four were small (two pumpkinseeds in the bay and a nice yellow perch out trolling), I hooked up in to an absolute beast while trolling out a few miles in front of our cottage. Easy 10 minute fight from this thing and the rod was shaped like an upside down U for the entire fight! Finally after reeling in 80 feet of line we lifted the monster in to the boat and it turned out to be a huge Drum, the biggest I've ever caught! This thing was 30" 14 pounds and according to the fish commission was the largest verified catch in PA in the last three years! This is also the fourth time I've broke my personal best Drum in the past 3 months! I've only ever seen one Drum longer than this which was my uncle's 32"r a few years back, however his was very skinny and was only 8.5 pounds. This thing was one of the fattest and healthiest Drums I've ever seen and after getting some pictures we stopped the boat so I could revive it for about 5-10 minutes before it had the energy to swim away, not letting the gulls kill this nice breeder! It takes drum a solid 10 years to hit 20" so I can't see this guy not being close to 20. One of the best catches of my life and as an avid Drum angler this was my best trophy one so far!
That thing is massive. Congrats mate
Thanks, was one of my favorite all time catches!
It's unreal how many of them there are lately. It's a big problem actually, they are overrunning a lot of waterways. Fight isn't bad, but i feel like they are so populated it may adversely effect other populations. Just speculating, but I've never caught so many out of my canoe in the river as this year.
Used to be a lot more because the water was dirtier and they were hardier than other species. I don't see it as a problem at all, they're a native species that does not predate on adult game fish and they provide great sport. One of my favorite fish to target. Also which waterways are they overrunning in your area and what species d you think they're threatening? In my part of erie there's very healthy populations of Yellow Perch, White Bass, White Perch, Walleye, Smallies and Largemouth, Rock Bass, Steelhead, Lake Trout, Channel Catfish, Drum, Spotted Gar, Northrn Pike, Muskellunge, Emerald, Spottail, and Golden Shiners, and even Coho and Chinook Salmon (the salmon are rare but I did get a nice chinook a few weeks ago in pretty deep water).
I have Lake Huron, Erie, Ontario, and Michigan (I believe, never fished it) within an hour from me. My observation was from my local river, the Thames River in London Ontario, where this year every other drift you catch one of these. Popular opinion are that they are scum, and eat tons of fish eggs. I can tell you 2 years ago I went on a 12 hour canoe trip down the river where we caught 80+ fish, 35 or so being silver bass. This year the population of silver bass and suckers in terms of reports of people catching them had diminished in exchange for these sheephead. These fish will eat everything including glass, mollusks, and literal crap. Do not stick you're thumb in their mouths, you are asking for an infection, they have almost like molar like teeth used for crushing in their throats. One cool thing about them is behind their eye they have a white stone with an L or V engraving in it, you can find them at tourist spots sold as necklaces or bracelets. I personally think they eat the fish eggs, which is fine, until there are too many big ones. I believe we are talking about the same fish, drum = sheephead no?
You should feel lucky your area is good, around here Erie is regarded as the worst lake. Not only in terms of the algae bloom, but the general dirt, but the low trout and salmon population. It does produce some nice pike and a hell of a lot of perch around this way.
On a side note, SALMON SEASON IS HERE! Time to sacrifice sleep and chuck spoons off the pier all night long. Can't wait.
Hmm, that's an odd coincidence that the drum are increasing as the white bass are decreasing. Could it be that the water quality in your river has gone down? Yes we're both talking about "sheephead", since white bass, suckers, and drum are all native I feel that their populations can manage themselves though and if there's been a sudden increase in drum population that it is probably due to human influence such as pollution and habitat degradation. I will agree that the western basin of erie has high amounts of algae and not as much biodiversity, but I don't like the western basin myself, I'm more of an eastern basin guy
. The eastern basin, at least, is full of lake trout, steelhead, and has a few salmon mixed in there as well. It's much cleaner, colder, and deeper water than the western or central basins (we fish trout and salmon in 70-150 feet of water and visibility can be up to 40-50 feet on calm days). So maybe drum are a problem in your area because you fish on the western or central basin, where there is less sport species diversity and the water is not as clean?I wouldn't say there's less sports species, there's some pretty famous spots. But you may have a point about pollution effecting it now that I think about it, especially in the particular river. That's good you at least got a decent amount of rainbow, if i couldn't steelhead fish i probably wouldn't fish much at all.
