Few pics, but the meat of the post is here.
Hey all. I’ve been wading a major New England River for the past few weeks and figured I’d share my experience.
Grew up shore and boat fishing for bass. Never had a reason to get in the water (outside of retrieving a lure). But the conditions to end the summer have been less than ideal. The river has been lower than I can remember for many weeks. Few factors: Rainfall, dam repair below, and release behavior above.
So, it’s been too shallow for boating. Tried it once, pulled the boat across gravel at 4 spots.
Shore fishing got old quick. Had never really considered wading, but decided to give it a shot.
The result has been weeks of fun. Not only could I wade out to islands and literally across the river in one spot, but walking to spots never accessible from shore. This entire time I never saw another person.
Now this required really learning the river, spending some time on google maps looking for access points shallow enough to access large areas of the river. Walking the river was a blast. Mapping out wading routes with bald eagles circling was almost as much fun as catching fish. The constant moving made it way more enjoyable than shore fishing, without the navigating required to fish the river by boat. 90 degree days were plenty cool in the water, and the 65 degree days the water was warmer than the air.
While I’m terrible at taking pics of fish, and generally only take one pic per day, caught some nice fish. Topwater almost exclusively, pop-r and whopper plopper/choppo mainly. No trophy fish, but some solid smallmouth fishing.
Anyways, if you’re patient enough to navigate it, a strong swimmer, and can fish with a small backpack or loaded shirt pockets, don’t discount wading. Be ready to take a flailing smallmouth waving treble hooks off while in the water. I wish I’d started earlier in the season. And while I hope for a return to normalcy so that fishing by boat is doable again, I won’t be too sad if I have to wade again next year!
Posted by ForRielle