[Grovage]

Me and my brother-in-law went to Mansfield Hollow on opening day. It was out maiden voyage on our new bass tracker. Well not exactly new, its a 1983 16" basstracker that we completely rebuilt over the winter. Let me start out by saying that this lake is huge! We explored the entire north side of the lake first. We were targeting Northern Pike and we threw everything we had including large live shiners but we didn't even get a bite.

We then decided to explore the south side of the lake and we quickly realized that inorder to get to that side, we had to squeeze our boat through a small water tunnel that flows under the main road, That was fun

While on the south side, we managed to pull out 3 pickeral, the largest being about 26" long. All the fish we caught were in the small coves that lie on the perimeter throughout the lake. The fish were finicky for sure and hard to read. We caught the first pickeral on a 5" rooster tale, # 2 was caught on a large live minow, # 3 was caught on a small silver shad rattlebait.

Despite the wind and low fish count, we had a great time.

[AVec80X]

I'm not sure what the water temp is there now, but the Pike bite is usually pretty good over where the Mt. Hope River flows in (providing the water is +50º)
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[Ten10]

Mansfields tough. Not surprised with the pickerel bite though. You did well! No skunk that Mansfields well known for.

[Grovage]

Yea, we heard the same thing as we were leaving. One guy said that most people were getting skunked and the fact that we caught anything should be considered a win.

[Michael]

With pickerel being the most aggressive member of the pike family in North America, they always seem to be the ones to kick into action before pike do. Pickerel are in the shallows before ya know it.