Massachusetts Fishing Report - December 3, 2015

The word is that almost no one is fishing. That’s good news for those still interested in a tight line as many species strap on the feedbag in preparation of the lean times ahead during the winter. With relatively balmy weather predicted, few anglers and willing fish this weekend is looking like a winner.

Rarely do you leave them biting, but that was just the case last Thursday for team Little Sister in Westport. James Warmsley, Glenn Verdini, Captain Colby and yours truly set sail while risking the wrath of our collective better halves to try for tog on Thanksgiving morning. The catching was furious and getting better as the morning progressed. It took a while, but James and Glenn came to the “green” side and opted for Tidal Tails Jig’z instead of the bait rigs and they began catching better and bigger with big Jim catching the biggest blackfish of the day. To me there’s no debate: a 1-ounce jig verses 8 ounces of lead and two snag-grabbing hooks? The tog can breathe a big sigh of relief since the skipper pulled the Little Sister from its slip soon thereafter. With the sweet weather predicted, it’s your turn to catch the fish that we didn’t!

Lisa from Fore River told me that smelt interest is as strong as she can remember, which is necessitating her into slogging through Quincy estuaries to keep grass shrimp on hand. Expect live grass shrimp as well as frozen for this weekend. The usual spots have been good with Nut Island getting this week’s nod. There had been some construction at Hewitts Cove in Hingham which has made access problematic, check in with Fore River for the latest. With the marinas in the Town River producing it might be time to give the easy-access dock behind the CVS on the Southern Artery a shot!

Grass shrimp are appealing to more than just smelt. Trout and smallmouth bass love them! In fact patrons of the shop mix in bits of shrimp with Power Bait to make a concoction that trout find irresistible! One place you might be able to tempt a trout or two from is Hopkinton Reservoir according to Eric from Lunkers. Not only have anglers been doing great on rainbows but browns from the spring stocking have held over, put on size and color and are a prize to catch.

Rod from Arlington B&T has been seeing some photos of brilliantly colored brown trout taken from Walden and White’s Pond in Concord. Some of the fish have topped 6 pounds and are ablaze with spawning hues! While most have been taken on shiners and worms, I’d downsize to 4-pound fluorocarbon and opt for a mealworm under a clear bubble. I have a hunch that a grass shrimp would be a meal a wily old brown would find hard to pass up.

Spy Pond in Arlington has received a lot of buzz about the recent stocking of fingerling tiger muskies. While it will take years for these fish to grown to respectable size, you don’t have to wait for an oversized member of the Esox clan to catch here. This place has some huge pike in it! Fish up to 44” were taken through the ice last year and 36” pike were caught from open water this past season. Donny from Merrimack Sports knows a thing or two about pike in the Merrimack River. He suggests that you fish downstream of the Lawrence Dam with tributary effluences being a best bet. Go big as in an oversized spinner, spinnerbait, or swimbait. Upstream of the dam it is smallie country, although every once in a while a walleye pops up to make things more interesting.

Congratulations to Jim D’Angelo for catching a colossal 6-pound, 6-ounce smallmouth bass from Wachusett Reservoir on Thanksgiving Day. The big bronzeback was 20 3/8” long and a whopping 16 ½” wide! The caveat is that the fish was not weighed into B&A in West Boylston until the following day because of the holiday. According to Eddie, the slab smallie was not even put on ice but rather simply left in a bag; so how big was that bass when fresh? Jim has been one of Wachusett Reservoirs top lure-casters for decades and not surprisingly he was working his favorite lure, a ¾-ounce blue/chrome Kastmaster, when he caught the fish off Gate 7. There might just be something to that lure in that area that late in the season for big smallmouth bass. My very first fish I ever caught at Wachusett Reservoir was a 4 ½-pound smallie taken in the same area on that very lure in the final days of November. For most the season is over at the “Res”, but not for all. Holdover rainbows and brown trout live upstream of the Oakdale Dam on the Quinapoxet where fishing is allowed all season long. Additionally, the same lax regulations exist upstream of the railroad bridge in the Stillwater River. You can soak a shiner in that basin and stand a good chance of catching a laker or even a wayward salmon.

The other local option is Comet Pond, which not only harbors stocked rainbows but annually harbor holdover brown trout, brook trout and tiger trout. Brandon from Granby’s told me that angling participation has dropped off dramatically. That’s a shame since the shop is teaming with shiners and the weather forecast looks comfortable. If you’d rather catch than read about it Brandon’s best bets are Moore’s Pond for trout and The Oxbow for most everything else. A super-sized shiner could be slammed by anything from a bowfin to a walleye to a pike. Upstream of the boat ramp you’re likely to encounter smallmouth bass.

Fishing Forecast

It’s not every year that we get to fish open water in December without even the complexity of frozen line and guides! If you love salt in your diet and even better a plate of baked blackfish, tautog should still be on a tear among the rockpiles on the Westport side of Buzzards Bay. For salty fish a lot smaller but no less scrumptious, grab a gill of grass shrimp from Fore River in Quincy and set out for Hull or Nut Island for smelt. Close to the coast there are pike as long as a good-sized striper prowling around In Spy Pond as well as the Merrimack River. You also may be able to pull in a pike from The Oxbow, which is a fishbowl with limitless species if there ever was one.