[PECo]

DirtyDawg10 (aka Derek) and I fished both ponds at Nod Brook WMA this morning. When I arrived between the ponds at 6:45 am, the air was cool and the sky was totally overcast. There was only a slight south breeze. The weather was almost perfect! I saw a guy fishing from the shore near the bottom of the culvert in the lower (i.e., north) pond. Derek had arrived at 6:30 am and was fishing from the shore near the top of the culvert in the upper (i.e., south) pond. He had already landed two small largemouth bass with a wacky rigged five inch Senko. We decided to begin our day by searching for Noddie in the upper pond, and unloaded La Calabaza and El Habañero from my Saab. While we loaded our gear from our cars into the boats, Derek spoke with the other shore fisherman. He said that he had seen a guy pull a five pound largemouth out of the lower pond the other day. Unfortunately, the guy kept the fish. At least we knew it wasn't Noddie that had been fishnapped! After we launched, Derek continued to throw the wacky Senko at cover. I had promised myself that I would troll a couple of hard stickbaits around the pond, so I tied on a Brown Trout patterned Rapala Original Floater F09 and a gold/black REBEL 2-1/2 Inch Minnow (Slick Body). I paddled counter-clockwise around the pond from the culvert to the northeast corner and didn't get any hits. Meanwhile, Derek had boated a couple of 13 inch largemouth with the wacky Senko. When both of my lures fouled in the weeds on the shallow ridge that runs from the east shore to the north island, I gave up on them and tied on a wacky Senko, too. It wasn't long before I got the skunk off of my boat with a 13 incher of my own:



It was soon followed by another 13 incher, a couple of rock bass and three more 13 inchers:




I also boated a couple of six inchers and an eight incher, but they weren't worth the time to take photos. Meanwhile, Derek also boated some shorts. As we paddled into the shallows at the south end of the pond, we began to wonder whether the lunker would be only 13 inches. I decided to tie on a soft plastic frog, but discovered that I had neglected to bring any with me. I had taken them out of my bag because I didn't think that I would need them at Rainbow Reservoir yesterday. Luckily, Derek had a package of watermelon/red flake Cabela's AquaGlow Mad Tommy toads with him and gave me one to try. To me, it looked, felt and smelled almost exactly like a Stanley Ribbit frog. It swam like one, too. I got a few hits in the shallows, but nothing worthy of a hookset. Derek didn't get any action with the wacky Senko either, so we decided to head down the west shore. As we drifted with the rising wind, I threw the frog over the weeds as Derek followed behind me with the wacky Senko. I got a few decents hits but missed the hooksets. One largemouth that I missed jumped clear of the weeds and looked like it was bigger than 13 inches. Derek tossed the wacky Senko at the edge of the weeds where it had jumped and it took the Senko. But after he boated the largemouth, we found that it was only 13 inches long. When I got to the end of the water hyacinth beds on the west shore and near where the creek empties into the pond, I threw the frog into the shallows and dragged it past the last bed of hyacinths. I got a big hit. The fish took the frog down to the bottom in deeper water as I counted to five, reeled in the slack and set the hook. From the way that it pulled, I knew that we had finally broken the 14 inch mark. Derek asked me how big I thought it was and I said 16 or 17 inches. But after I finally lipped it, I saw that it was a lot bigger than that:




She was a real cow! She was just over 19 inches long, but weighed four pounds, five ounces. I expected her to weigh a lot less. At this point, Derek finally tied on a frog of his own. A little while later, the frog got me a 16 incher at the mouth of the creek:



After that, however, the next one was back down to 13 inches:



By this time, we were back at the culvert and it was only 10:00 am. I was itching to do some more frogging, so I talked Derek into dragging our kayaks over to the weedy lower pond. Derek hadn't gotten anything on the frog in the upper pond, but he soon fixed that in the lower pond:



We drifted all the way up to the north end of the lower pond before I finally got a couple of more that were, you guessed it, 13 inches long:



Just before 11:30 am, it started to sprinkle. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before the wind really began to blow and the rain began to fall, so we headed back to the culvert and off of the water. We were out of there by 11:45 am when, of course, the rain began to taper off. But we already had a pretty good day on the water.
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Don't forget to wear sunscreen and don't litter!

[steven1smith]

Wow, that is one THICK fish.
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Catch and release only.
A 4lb bass is not going to grow to 8lbs on your wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxCdnQ8WEfQ

[slim2043]

What a Lunker! Looks like a good morning guys!
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Never give up!

[DirtyDawg10]

It was a great morning to be on the water. The fish were biting and it was overcast. If the wind wasn't blowing the conditions would have been perfect. I ended up boating 12 largemouth today. Most were 13" and my biggest was a 14". The 14"er came on the Mad Tommy Toad and the rest were on the wacky senko. I was glad to see Phil boat that 4lb+ fish because I haven't seen one yet this year. Looks like Noddie may have a younger sister. Here's another pic of Phil's big girl...


Here's a couple of the fish I landed. Almost all of them had big fat bellies on them and were nice and healthy.

[Fishface]

That's a fair one. Just kidding nice fish Phil. Nice job guys.

Tim

[justinmorse]

I'm jealous.
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Fish. Just fish.