megad80

Myself and my wife's uncle launched from the route 225 ramp on the Bedford/Carlisle line, and we were out on the river by 1:30. This time I took other anglers advice and turned south, under the bridge (towards Concord).

We first stopped a little way before the river starts to get narrow. My friend was fishing the phoebe and was having no luck. I first threw the top water ribbit frog (as usual), and no luck. I looked in my tackle box for answers and switched to a small rubber swim bait with a paddle tail and a weight. I maybe made 3 casts, and I caught a Calico Bass/Crappie. On my 5 cast, WHAM. Something hit the lure... The fight was on... Got the fish in, and it was a northern pike, the first one that I've ever caught. Thank god for the hook out tool, or I may have had some bloody fingers. The pike absolutely destroyed my rubber swim bait... rubber shreaded off the weight, and the pike snapped the hook. I didn't weigh the fish, but it was large.

We went further south towards Concord in the area where it gets narrow, and I switched to a small spinner with a head that immitates a shiner/bait fish. To make a long story short, I caught 4 more northern pike and 3 bass. The spinner seemed to be working. My friend eventually followed suit, and switched to a spinner. On his first cast he landed a nice bass, probably a 1.5 lbs. That was the largest bass of the day. The pike really seemed to be liking the spinners this day.

My usual lures didn't work all day long... I threw rubber worms, ribbit frog, heddon torpedo... and not even a strike! The spinner seemed to be what was getting the job done.

I had a blast out there and I can't wait to go back. I did get some video of one of the pike I caught. Here is the link, and it is also posted on my blog.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU2Oep8Cd9k

We showed up at the boat launch at 6:15 eager and ready to go with high ambitions for victory. We launched, and the go was given and we were off...

The next 8 hours, we did not catch a single keeper!! We tried throwing everything at them... topwater, spoons, soft baits, jigs, swimbaits... EVERYTHING. For our first tournament, we were a little demoralized.

We had one nice fish (estimated 2.5 lbs.), but lost it at the side of the boat. After that, we knew it just wasn't our day.

I did land a giant pickerel on a spoon... a monster. So the day wasn't a complete loss. Too bad it didn't count for the tournament. :-( Everything else we caught that day was less than 12 inches.

It was tough to roll a donut on our very first tournament, but we can only go up from here I suppose.

Oh well, "A bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work."

I caught one fish all day... one largemouth bass on my first cast. It was about a pound. The next 5 hours, not even a bite! I caught the fish on the ribbit frog, so I stuck with that for most of the day. Switched to the rubber worm... no luck. Switched to a phoebe... nothing... I saw one guy pull in a nice carp, another guy pull in a northern pike... but they just weren't biting my line. It's my first time fishing in the Concord River, so I don't know where the hot spots are. I will surely go back and have some better luck next time.

I go here a a lot. I never usually have a 'limit' day, but I usually put 1-2 big fish in the boat a day. This day was no exception... I caught the biggest bass I ever caught on the Ribbit frog top water lure. The bass was caught in maybe 3 feet of water next to a dock with a pontoon boat tied up to it. I couldn't believe the size of this fish. MASSIVE. I didn't know that there were fish that large in that lake.