The Community Classic - Weeks 4 & 5
The saltwater leaderboard finally saw some action as the gang tried their best to capitalize on the fresh spring bite. Some unlikely team-ups resulted in some productive fishing, and tensions rose across the board as some high-valued fish were claimed.
If you’ll recall from my last update, I hatched a plan to catapult myself back into winning contention. The weekend of the 4th of May, unbeknownst to my buddies, I conducted a top-secret Rhode Island trip with the intention of bagging first place tog and striper in one fell swoop, without alerting the other contestants. I met up with some non-contestant friends of mine and quickly got to work. Striper fishing was initially slow, but fortunately the new arrivals showed up eventually. I only measured a single fish, which proved to be the largest of the day at 28” on the nose. Striper is our only 10 point category, so this lurched me straight into 2nd place. Suffice to say, the boys were not pleased. We did a bit of tog fishing too, but had no luck at our usual productive spots.
I know it’ll get beat eventually, but nothing wrong with grabbing an early lead for posterity’s sake!
Brendan did a bit more largemouth fishing that same weekend and caught a few shorts, nothing that would place on the chart today. At that exact same time, Christian and Grady were once again up to their old tricks. Little did we know that a SECOND secret Maine trip had just struck the tower. Christian ended up upgrading his largemouth to a 16.5 incher while fishing on Grady’s boat in a lake in the greater Portland area. The category is definitely seeing some solid action, but nobody is yet to weigh in a truly trophy sized fish yet. I expect that to change as the weather continues to improve.
The weekend of the 11th saw a slight improvement to the tog bite as Declan met up with Christian in Rhode Island, no doubt colluding with the intention of stealing the open category. I’m frankly embarrassed to report on their day 1 results, although they did manage to redeem themselves on day 2. Declan weighed in a paltry 12in tog, while Christian took second place striper by measuring a 27in fish. Despite my moral objection to entering a smaller-than-slot striper into the contest, this fish did indeed net him a cool 5 points.
For shame, Christian!
On day 2, Declan upgraded his tog to 17 inches, a much more respectable (and delicious) fish. However, I’m sly enough to understand the subtext here. If Declan entered two tog and was fishing with Christian the whole time, that means that Christian either a) caught 0 tog the entire weekend or b) caught no tog on day 1 and only caught tog that were less than 12in on day 2. Either result is great for me, because I get to make lots of fun of him.
Next, the two headed out into Narragansett Bay and found themselves in the midst of a respectable bluefish blitz, at least for this early in the year. Both caught 33in bluefish, but Christian caught and measured his fish first, so he wins first place (for the time being).
Flag kid! Flag kid!
Finally, this past weekend Grady took an annual trip up to Grand Lake Stream, one of the premier landlocked salmon fly fishing destinations on the eastern seaboard. I’ve always found that the best fly fishing towns in America are also commonly inhabited by fringe television personalities, and fortunately Grand Lake Stream is no exception. It’s other claim to fame is that it was the birthplace of famed children’s puppeteer “Buffalo” Bob Smith, the host of The Howdy Doody Show. That should tell you all you need to know about the demographics of the region. Anyway, Grady caught a 16.5in landlocked salmon and first place smallie at 13in. He also got interviewed by an On the Water Media goon for fishing a dam for smallmouth instead of fishing for salmon like a real fly fisherman would. I’ll allow him the courtesy of elaborating on this story during his next blog post.
Nice salmon, bad photo!
The majority of the boys will be celebrating Brendan’s wedding this weekend, but we’ll do our best to do some fishing before/at/after it. It’s at a golf course I think, which means big big largemouth!
-Max
