Yep, it's winter. This was not a rockfish trip, so if you are not interested in fresh water pond hopping on the Eastern Shore, you can stop now
Weather forecast was for bad weather later this week, but Tuesday was going to be 55* with light winds. I had a buddy (Calvin) that enjoys fresh water fishing, so I called him to see if he was available.
We left around 8:30am and took a leasurly drive across the bridge so I could show him a few ponds I fish on the shore.
We arrived around 10am and stopped in my favorite Country Store so we could buy fresh made subs to carry with us as we pond hopped the rest of the day (Garlein knows where I mean)
There was no Lysol/Bleach disinfectant to step into before entering, so the chicken houses must not be experiencing any breakout of bird influenza this year
Yes, this is a REAL country store
While our subs were being made, I showed my Calvin around the store. On the shelves you will find 4 cans of Spam, three bottles of Ketchup/Mustard, four loaves of bread, six TastyCakes, and a whole wall of different kinds of beer
We caught fish at every pond we stopped!! The chain pickerel were hungry, but the bass were not, and the crappie had lockjaw.
I had one rod set up with my favorite lure (#4 Mepps with white tail) and three more set up for shiner/minnow bobber fishing. Only one pickerel was caught on the Mepps, everything else caught on the shiners/bobbers.
Calvin had three rods set up with different freshwater lures (popper, buzz bait, rattletrap) and a big bag of other lures.
He kind of looked at my bobber rigs as if I was Huck Finn or something
No worries, my small plastic container had extra bobbers, small hooks, and lots of shiners/minnows in my bubbling bait bucket
As I caught pickerel after pickerel (and one bass) on my live bait, I suggested he fish one of my rods. It didn't take long before he was converting his rods to live bait rods too
Two of the most memorable catches were when I was bringing in my bobber to recast, and a pickerel attacked it as I was about to lift it out of the water, and another when Calvin's bobber was blown by the wind to within 2 ft of the shoreline and it too was attacked for an exciting hookup.
I swear, I believe the pickerel swim around the shallow shoreline looking for frogs, or other small animals that fall into the water. I think they cruise these edges all day.
That's not to say we didn't catch some out in the open waters of the pond while we were looking for bass and crappie, but most of our strikes were 5 to 15 ft off the bank.
I would cast out as far as I could, then let the wind blow the bobber toward shore. I set my shiner/minnow shallow (about 6-7 inches below the bobber).
We probably caught 15 or more pickerel at my favorite ponds, then moved to another close by spillway of another pond and caught several more.
The final fish of the day were at this spillway. I was fighting a fish when I saw another bobber go down. I said to Calvin, go catch that fish, so we finished the day on a "double" before heading home into a setting sun.
It was a fun day to get outside and wet a line. Calvin has a few ponds to show me next time the weather cooperates
5th
Jan 8th fishing
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