Monthly Archives May 2011

By: Rick Greene

Today started off just like most of the other days this month, that is dull and deary with a chance of showers. It quickly changed to a more upbeat kind of day when the grandkids asked to go fishing. We were not long packing a lunch and getting tackle and safety gear into the boat. We hooked up the Sierra and headed for Eel River. My son backed us in and two minutes later we were fishing. There were already a couple of boats in there when we arrived but we were into the fish almost immediately. Fan casting a number three silver Blue Fox in-line spinner produced numerous fish that averaged about 14-15 inches. Not a lot of big fish but lots of numbers which is what it takes to keep the kids busy and their interest high...

It has been a busy spring but we are up and running for season two with Backwater Casting on Rogers TV New Brunswick. We will start taping our first show late next week. Of special interest this year is a collaboration with the New Brunswick Sport Fishing Association and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. We are going to take a group of tournament anglers in to Miramichi Lake and see if we can remove some of the Smallmouth Bass that were illegally stocked into the lake. This is a serious issue because of the long term effects this could have on the Atlantic Salmon fishery. Hopefully we can help out and perhaps help to educate folks that moving fish is not the ethical thing to do.

See you on the water.

The first stop on this years Molson Mercury Bass Tour is the Grand Falls Flowage on the border with the State of Maine. This event is sponsored by Shimano Canada and Advatek Scales. My son drove up from Moncton to fish this one with me. With the trickle start you don’t always get the spot you want even if you are driving a faster boat and that was the case this morning. We almost caught the guys but didn’t quite make it. We stopped on a back up spot and went fishing. Second cast on a Blue Fox in-line spinner put a chunky 3 lb. smallmouth in the boat. Not to bad for a second choice. We fished here for about an hour and a half and alternated with Blue Fox, Husky Jerks and Pointers and got a few fish on each of them. The guys who had been on the spot we wanted left and we moved up...

The freezing cold prefish paid off for us this weekend. The fishing was still on the slow side and our first spot didn’t produce any fish. I had two faint harded hits on a Husky Jerk but they didn’t hook up. The water is still only in the mid forties and these fish are definitely sluggis.

We moved into our second spot and it seemed like it was going to be a repeat and then I spotted a big fish come up behind Phil’s bait. He did everything he could to entice a strike but with the wind blowing the boat around the fish spooked and took off. We were in the dumps big time because it looked like a monster bass. We decided to camp out there for a while. I got a high two for our first fish and then Phil hooked up with a good one. We figured she was a big three or low four and put her in the well...