CTFishTalk.com: Housatonic River - Sunnyside 05/02 - Connecticut River Reports ( CT River Reports ) - A Community Built for Connecticut Fisherman.

PECo · Joined: 06 Oct 2009 Posts: 5203 Location: Avon, CT

I wasn't planning to go fishing at all on Wednesday. I thought that I was going to drive my wife down to Newark. However, during dinner on Tuesday, she notified me (she says that she reminded me) that we weren't leaving for Newark until Wednesday night, so I decided to hit the lower Housy, again. Whoo hoo!

Of course, that's when things began to go south. Somehow, between cleaning up the kitchen after dinner and going to bed, I managed to tweak my lower back and, then, my daughter texted us from college to let us know that she had a fever. . . at 3:56 am! After trying and failing to get back to sleep with my back talking to me, I finally decided to just get out of bed and try to go fishing. I managed to hit the road at 6:00 am. Conditions were good:

I launched in my bass boat just after 7:15 am. The water temperature was 52.9 degrees and the water level was already crazy low. You can see the high tide line on the rocks in front of the boat and the water level was still dropping:

After idling through the No Wake Zone in front of River's End Marina, I ran down to and idled through the No Wake Zone in front of Wooster Island. As I maneuvered around a couple of crew teams. I decided to check out the downriver side of the island. I threw an unweighted, single-hook, nine-inch, Ice Shad Lunker City Slug-Go. I saw nothing.

I continued downriver, idled through the No Wake Zone in front of Beacon Point Marine and stopped in front of Sikorsky. I saw nothing.

I crossed the river to the opposite bank and checked out the rip-rap channel edge, which was still in the shade. This time, I finally saw something. I got a couple of swirls and had a couple of follows by schools of four or five little schoolies, but got no hits.

I crossed under the Route 15 bridge and entered the marine zone. As you might have noticed, I was running and gunning, looking for fish:

I checked out the area downriver from the island that's just upriver from the power lines. I saw nothing.

At this point, I decided to head all the way down to the mouth of the river. I idled through the long, loooong No Wake Zone from the Route 95 bridge to Channel Marker 14, which is just downriver from the Birdseye Boat Launch in Stratford. I stopped just upriver from the ramp to check out the steep channel edge on the opposite bank and finally got a hit on the Slug-Go:

10 more minutes of casting to the bank yielded nothing, so I continued downriver past Channel Marker 14 and out of the No Wake Zone. There were oyster trawlers dragging the bottom everywhere:

By the time I got to the mouth of the river, it was 8:40 am:

This is Channel Marker 7, looking upriver to the northwest:

And this is looking downriver to the southeast. Normally, the lower breakwater is underwater at just the right depth to rip off your lower unit:

I threw the Slug-Go for a while, but saw nothing,

I decided to head back upriver, hoping that the incoming tide might turn on the bite. I re-entered the No Wake Zone at Birdseye:

As I idled back through the loooong No Wake Zone, I hit a few spots, but saw nothing. I finally got the the Route 95 bridge at 9:30 am:

I ran all the way upriver past the power lines and decided to try throwing a weightless, single-hook, 10-inch, Ice Shad Lunker City Fin-S Fish. I got some swirls and some nibbles, and finally caught another schoolie, but on the next hit, my leader broke at the knot. And the fish felt BIG! Arrrgh! So, I tied on another lure without a leader and managed to set the hook on a keeper:

I hooked into another fish that also felt like a keeper, but it quickly swam underneath the boat and pulled the hook. After a couple of more swirls and nibbles, the bite died completely. It was at this point that I noticed I was almost out of fuel:

I decided to work my way back to Sunnyside. I think that being exhausted and physically uncomfortable made me anxious to get the boat back onto the trailer. I hit the ramp at 11:10 am, with the fuel gauge waaaay below EMPTY and the water temperature at 54.5 degrees:

When I put the boat onto the trailer, I noticed that my bright, fluorescent pink Sunnyside Boat Ramp Non-Resident Permit was no longer on the winch tower of my trailer and it finally dawned on me why the guy in the City of Shelton pickup truck on the ramp had asked me whether I had a permit when I launched. Luckily, he recognized me from earlier in the year and didn't balk when I said, "Yeap, I sure do!" Thankfully, when I stopped at the City Clerk's office at Shelton City Hall, the nice ladies there issued me a replacement sticker.

Now, I'm all set to go, again, although I probably won't be able to get back down to the lower Housy for more than two weeks. Sometime during that stretch, though, I'll be dunking my teabag in the Gulf of Mexico while fishing from the beach down in Florida, and fishing for golitath grouper and tarpon on a charter, too.
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