Croton Hawg Fest!!!

Got out with Steve C aka Res Dog today from 6:30-4:30 and man did we get into some quality fish! Steve picked up an early keeper on a spinnerbait and another with a crank off a point before we settled in to some great shoreline and started banging out big fish on the bait of the day, the jig-n-pig.

We were using Steve's home-made jigs, and man were they awesome! They featured owner hooks, a sheneal(sp?) coating on the hook, three different shirt rubber fibers, including a thicker outer coating that flared out like a set of pinchers. But that's not all...they had a double or triple epoxy coating with glitter on the head. No matter how many rocks I bounced it off, it never chipped. It also had a set of feather or something like it with beads attached for some extra subtle clicking and flash. It really is a beautiful jig. To give me extra incentive, Steve told me that if I landed a 4 lber on it he'd make me 9 more for next spring! I sure was committed to the jig-n-pig after hearing that.

We worked the shoreline, sitting in 15-25 feet of water and casting to shoreline cover like riprap, laydowns and weed edges. We took a small keeper each off the shoreline and then worked into a cove with a nivce small waterfall and numerous laydowns. I got my first nice fish, a 3 lber off a laydown. It looked pretty big coming in, but not quite in the 4 lb. class. Steve picked up a 3.5 lb largie in the same cove before we moved on. Just outside the cove we found a great weed edge in 8-12 feet of water. I worked the outer edge with the jignpig, and got a nice thump that turned into a solid 4+lb. largemouth! I had a good feeling about the jig bite today, and the big fish had come through!

After that we moved down the shoreline towards the Taconic bridges. Steve was really heating up, nailing 3lb bass after 3lb bass, all on the jig-n-pig. I went through a bit if a dry spell while Steve racked up a nice limit. We crossed over tot he South side and worked that shoreline to the tune of a few more quality fish. Steve nailed a 4 lber and then another that went close to 5. Later I added two more 3 lbers on a little bitst bug jig tipped with half a Yammie Ika.

All in all we totaled close to 20 fish, with 3 over 4 lbs., 9 more between 3-4 lbs and several smaller keepers. Steve easily had a 17 lb bag of 5 fish (maybe as high as 18) while I had 14 and change, maybe as much as 15.

Water temps 57-58º air temps in the 60ºs. Wind out of the West at 5-10 mph. Most fish came on shorelines that had 20+ feet of water nearby. They were on outer edges and on shoreline cover like wood and riprap.

A great day on the water! The best I've had in a while. Steve can really control a rowboat, and put us on good fish! Hopefully he'll get his computer issues worked out and post a response with some details I missed....

Pictures coming in a response. There are a lot, so I don't want to cause problems for slow connections by putting them in this post, but I'll put them in a reply...

Mark