Largemouth fish story. Now that I’m married and have a little boy I’m relegated to lake fishing at our cottage in New Hampshire. I only dream about the ocean and live vicariously through you guys and the posts I read here which are great. Our lake (Mendums) was drained 30 feet last year to fix the 175 year old earthen dam which they did an awesome job on. Lake was completely full this year. I was very worried that a lot of the fish would have disappeared downstream with the big draining in the fall of 2015, but the fishing this year has been one of the best year’s I can remember. Lake is mostly a large and smallmouth fishery. We used to have chain pickerel but I haven’t seen one in several years. We did catch a first for us in 50+ years (owned the cottage since 1965) when we brought in a black crappie this summer. I had to look it up to be sure. It was quite large and a very good fight.
I’ve been teaching my son to fish on the lake and he loves to troll. He is constantly asking me to take him out trolling. He’s developed a really good cast with his mini-rod (Zebco type real) and to my astonishment he landed a nice size largemouth this summer all by himself. He was dragging a jitterbug in the middle of the day while I was giving a couple guests a tour. I was popping the boat in and out of gear to reduce the speed (Jitterbugs do best for us at a VERY slow speed) when he got a big hit. Here is the video of the catch. At first I thought it was a smallmouth because of the frequent jumps. Please forgive that this is a bit of a brag post, but I’m sure all the Dads out there understand how proud we are of our kids. He is just 4 years old. Try to ignore how excited I was for him. I definitely got a little carried away wanting him to land it. Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/UGd3_Xn5n2Q