I hit the water at noon hoping that the warm spell would trick the fish into thinking it was spring (fish don’t have calendars).We also got over 2” of warm rain the day before, I wasn’t sure if that would hurt or help me in catching fish. I had a few spots I wanted to try but first I thought I would try a spot near hart/miller island where I did good with yellow perch last spring, it was actually a good spot throughout most of the summer until the salinity rose from the drought which made them harder to catch. The water is basically shallow, and I was hoping there would be fish there because it may warm up quicker. I started casting a mini spinner bait, working it very slow. After about twenty minutes I hooked up with a good fighting fish that put my ulta light setup to the test, at first I thought it was a striper or a large mouth bass until I got a better look at it and saw it was a big pickerel, I was actually confused at first because I’ve never seen a pickerel that big before, Even though I knew there were no Northern Pike in the Upper bay, I had to look at it for a few seconds to verify that it was a pickerel
I took a couple pictures then measured it and it was just a hair under 26”!
After releasing that fish I was smiling from ear to ear. I’ve caught plenty of pickerel in loch raven Reservoir and a few in the upper bay rivers, but I don’t think many were over 20” if that ( I’ve never bothered to measure them) and I’ve never caught them in the Hart/Miller island area before. It crossed my mind to head in early because I didn’t think I would top that, but a few minutes later, about 50’ away I hooked up again. This fish was slightly over 27” and even fatter!!
A little while later I got another fish on that felt like a pickerel but it got off..
I knew the 27” was a trophy (To me anyway) but when I got home and looked up the state record Pickerel for the bay I was shocked to see it was only 6lbs 8ozs
I think its possible it could had been a record fish. ..My camera takes terrible pics when its sunny but I had a double whammy this time because the fish started going nuts while I was setting up the camera and I got slime all over the lens
