mr.marinara

Fished the Charles (Millis) with my buddy for his Rod&Rifle club's tourney. Fished from 7AM-1PM and the sun was out and the wind was whipping. Since we were in a John boat it was difficult to stay on track but we weren't the only ones having trouble.

We started by targeting coves with tall grass and pads and areas with small inflows. We were throwing a popper (baby bass), jig (black w/black&blue craw), frog (green), spinner (white & blue w/silver willowleaf) and an orange worm but were getting zero hits.

As the day progressed we ditched the popper for a rattle-trap and changed the jig to tan w/green pumpkin twin tail grub trailer. In addition to pads and grass we also tried some timber and rip-rap. Still nothing.

Around 11:30 my buddy finally had a hit and landed a 1.5lb bass on his orange worm. I had switched to a white grub and hooked into another small bass but it spit the hook. Both fish hit as the bait traveled away from the shore and into the river channel. That was it for bass but my friend did get a nice pickerel among lily pads with his orange worm.

Most teams struggled today and everyone said the bite got better in the late morning/early afternoon. It sounded like soft plastics worked slowly produced the most this day on the Charles. Biggest bag was 10lb and lunker was 5lb.

My friend and I took his boat out around 8AM and fished until noon. It was overcast, cool with some slight rain now and again. Started with a popper (bluegill) and buzzbait (white) and had strikes early on. The popper continued to get action but the buzzbait cooled off so my friend switched to a jig & craw for a bit, then a crankbait (bluegill) and finally a frog (green).

A couple of pickerel on on the crank near lily pads. Mostly bass on the popper and they were hugging cover (e.g. docks, brush, pads). The largest bass was caught with the frog between patches of pads. We caught 7 bass with most being ~1-1.5lb and biggest being ~2.5lb.

Just for fun we also caught about 2 dozen bluegills with a small soft plastic and float. Catching all those sunnies makes for a good laugh once in awhile =)