It’s part of Army life — pickup up and moving lock, stock, and barrel every few years, but some families you just really hate to see head on down the road. And so it is with the Hawthorne family — Aaron and Shelley, and their 5 kids, Kade, Cody, Connor, Ethan, and Alexis. This coming Friday starts a 2,300+ mile drive taking them to northern Maine and life after the Army.
Aaron (L), Connor (C), and Kade (R) with our best 6 fish culled out of a take of 78.
Here’s what was going on beneath the boat at quarter to nine this morning!!
Today we did a little farewell fishing trip as a way to say goodbye. Yes, cards and well wishes are nice, but, if you knew these boys, you’d know this was a whole lot more appropriate.
With the early morning bite still being pretty questionable (I fished solo then and only picked up 4 fish from sunrise to 8:00am), I scheduled our meeting time for 8:00am, and actually boated our first fish at 8:35am after “smoking lessons” and checking out 2 non-productive areas with sonar.
We found the first concentration of fish (and the best action of the morning) on the slope and upper end of the breakline at Area 784. We “smoked” with TNT180 slabs in 3/8 oz. white and boated 48 fish in under 40 minutes. The bite died pretty suddenly after that, making me suspect some big predators had moved in.
We continued searching and found fish at 3 more areas. Area 766 was a “flash in the pan” with 5 fish perking up right away and the school settling right back down and becoming lethargic.
We found fish once again at Area 785/786/079. This covers a patch of bottom 20-30 yards in diameter. Fish were clustered in distinct bunches here and there and were getting increasingly unwilling to move to our baits or the commotion created by hooked schoolmates. We had to make several short “hops” around this feature to continue to catch fish. When all was said and done, we’d boated 21 more fish here, again, all on TNT180’s.
By around 11:00am we’d seen the best of it, and, with winds heading toward 20mph and the bite getting soft, we decided to call it a good morning right there.
Aaron, you’ll have to let me know if white perch, yellow perch, togue, bullheads, cusk, or any other “Yankee” fish like their slabs “smoked”!! I hope your travels are safe and that your new start in Maine is all you hope for. May God bless your family.
TALLY = 78 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 8:00a
End Time: 11:00a
Air Temp: 73F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: ~73.7F
Wind: Winds were S10 at (obscured) sunrise, and slowly increased to S18 by trip’s end.
Skies: Skies were 100% greyed over this morning, slowly clearing beginning around 8:00 and then totally clearing and turning fair toward midday.