Upper Moodus Reservoir with Sharkey 06/14/2014

Sharkey and I set out at about 4:30 AM and got to Moodus by 5:00, and from there we parked at the beach along the Lower Moodus Reservoir and fished at the tressel. There were already people fishing for crappie and one gentleman had a bucket full of them that he brought home. So apparently the crappie bite there is decent.

Sharkey caught a largemouth from shore using a red lipless crank bait. I got a tap on a Savage Gear Line Thru trout, but no follow up bite to set the hook. 

At 6:30 we went to Lakeside Dan's, a small tackle shop tucked back into the Upper Reservoir. We rented a small rowboat, which neither of us really had any experience with. We proceeded to struggle our way out into open water and across the reservoir to a large group of lily pads. 

I had no hits on large swimbaits, but the KVD shads came through again with a solid bass and a pickerel. I threw them at the edge of the pads and slowly reeled them in with little twitches now and again. 

We eventually realized that the boat was taking on water through a small bolt hole in the side, and we decided to move back closer to shore before we sank ourselves. In the process Sharkey lost his lipless crank when he hooked into a big stump in the middle of the pads and we couldn't maneuver the boat close enough to retrieve it. 

Sharkey was at the front of the boat as we ran ashore, and he stood and hopped out before I could shift my weight. The entire back end of the boat dipped into the water, thoroughly soaking me and my gear, much to the amusement of my compatriot and several onlookers. 

After I berated Sharkey with a wide variety of insults, we moved back to the tressel to find that the other fishermen left. We worked our way along the road past a long cove that was filled with more lily pads. About halfway between the edge of the pads and the neighboring point,  I managed to get a strike on a green Booyah Pad Crasher but missed the hook set yet again. I have yet to master the trick of the weedless frog hook set. I know you are supposed to wait a second after the strike before you set the hook, but my timing is always off and the frog always floats to the surface once again. 

 Sharkey tried his luck at the tressel once more but had no luck there. When two other fishermen made their way down the road and positioned themselves right alongside us at the tressel we decided to pack it in for the day and head in to work. 

I managed to lose two rigged Savage Gear trouts during casts on this outing, presumably because of either (A) the rod I was using is not a freshwater casting rod and therefore not flexible enough to absorb some of the shock on the cast, (B) I am still snapping my rod too much when I cast big swimbaits and have not yet gotten the hang of casting them with more of a smooth swinging motion, or (C) both. I lost a few more at Miller's Pond a few days later in the same manner. I intend to switch back to my original casting rod in the hopes that this will at least partially lower my odds of snapping off during a cast.