Get on top for spring fishing

Calm water on a windless sunny day. You are looking at some submerged structure, nearby there is a culvert with overhanging shrubbery and there is a light foam film on the water. You cast your top water lure to the edge of the foam directly between the culvert and the submerged structure and slowly begin your retrieve. All of a sudden you see a wave come out of the shrubbery, coming across the water towards your lure. It gets closer and closer when suddenly there is an explosion of water around your bait as the fish bursts from the surface grabbing your lure. Your muscles tighten and your adrenaline is pumping as you try to keep yourself from yanking too early. You count 1001, 1002, and then you set the hook and the fight is on. This is the experience that my brother, nephew and I had this last Saturday as we fished Everett Lake in Weare, NH.

Everett Lake
When we arrived at the lake at 6 a.m. the surface of the water was so calm that it felt like a shame to disturb it. It was a little rainy at first and the bites were slow. We mainly caught a few small, Pickerel, Perch and Kibbies. The rain was coming down off and on and we found a nice pool created by a Beaver dam where we sat for an hour pulling in these little fish in abundance. It was tremendous fun… Kibbie1 Pickerel1

…but once the sun came out and we started moving around the lake, the fishing got way better.

I can’t convey well enough the excitement of seeing a fish come out of the water trying to grab your top water lure. If you want extreme fun, then I urge you to try out some top water baits. We were using the Heddon Torpedos. I had on the Bull Frog and my brother was using the Black Shiner,

both of which were catching some really nice fish with the largest being a 3.5 lb Bass. We used our general 7 ft. fishing rod with 6 lb. test line and on this day we would cast to sunken structure or overhanging shrub, use a short jerking retrieve and then the fun began as we could literally watch the wave as the fish came out of hiding and attacked our baits. The resulting dance of the fish once we set the hook made this trip worthwhile.