Massachusetts Fishing Report – March 23, 2017

If you’re itching to catch stocked trout, then Masswildlife is playing your song. The drone from trucks going and coming from our hatcheries has been a constant throughout every district except the far west. While the catching odds aren’t as favorable, you may want to consider exploring some of the river systems where you never know what you’ll find.

Taking it to the River

Years ago, I viewed rivers rather unfavorably mainly because they were usually the scene of many a skunking. The torment usually took place on trout streams where my sophomoric tactics were exposed as crude and ineffective by some guy who could have stepped right out of central casting for an Orvis catalog. Invariably, the fly guy would catch trout after trout as I watched haplessly while attempting to shake my spinner from a low-hung branch. To this day, I’m traumatized by a certain ash that I swear mocked me every time I fished there.

Seeing that Masswildlife is bequeathing brooks, streams, and rivers with a fresh batch of trout, it dawned on me how much more I appreciate rivers than I used to. However, what I really find fascinating is less the classic trout stream but more what were once “dirty water” highways of industrial malfeasance, namely big urban Bay State rivers. As much as I love coldwater, pristine fisheries such as Wachusett and Quabbin, I wouldn’t consider swapping the coastal Bay State rivers for those blue-ribbon freshwater bodies for a second.

The Weymouth Back, Charles, Mystic, and Merrimack rivers have become some of the more varied fishbowls New England has to offer. And best of all, they are bound to get even better. This is in large part due to the Division of Marine Fisheries, stewards of our rivers who are passionate and work tirelessly to improve upstream access to river herring and even shad. A residual beneficiary of this is that other river-run species such as white perch are faring better.

Some of this is due to the bump in easy forage for the predators that alewife and blueback herring fry provide beginning in mid-July and lasting as late as December. Additionally, the efforts to provide passage to spawn in heretofore unreachable habitat is providing a boon to other anadromous species which are thriving thanks to more spawning habitat.

The foreseeable future should be a good time to love local rivers. I recently had a conversation with Brad Chase, who is the DMF Biologist in charge of the Bay State’s anadromous species (river running) species. Brad has a genuine passion for our fisheries, which I have appreciated for years. What prompted our discussion was the firsthand and secondhand empirical evidence I know of that river fisheries in these parts are exploding! He informed me that his group is working with state and local agencies to remove spawning obstacles in numerous rivers such as the Weymouth Fore and Mystic rivers. They also monitor water volumes and when there are droughts such as what we had last summer, they thwart the downstream migration of the herring fry to as late as December to improve survival rates.

So, what are the fruits of that labor? How does projected one million strong herring runs sound? The Nemasket Run is already there, and the Mystic just may be next. Not surprisingly, the rivers are running hot for a number of species. Maria from Fore River B&T told me that anglers last year were making unintended and unexpected catches of white perch between the mouth of the Weymouth Back River through Hingham Harbor. Having never heard of such a thing, Maria was a bit of a Doubting Thomas until incredulous salts informed her that they indeed knew what a white perch was. I’m wondering if those white perch are biting now?

There used to be a shop at Dorchester’s Neponset Circle that was white perch central for Bostonians looking to fill a pail with sweet-eating sea-run white perch in the Assonett River in Freetown. You could see anglers dotting the shoreline just off both sides of Route 24, and they did very well on grass shrimp, chubs, and seaworms. While it’s been awhile, I wonder if that watershed has a resurgent white perch population as well.

Then there’s the Charles River, which thanks to the efforts of both state and federal fishery agencies is seeing the a rebirth of American shad. Greater Boston anglers may one day no longer need to make the haul out to the Merrimack or North Rivers to duke it out with the “poor man’s salmon.” It’ll be very interesting to see if the upward trajectory for this season continues. Regarding the Merrimack, improvements in fish passage there are paying off in huge dividends also. The buzz is now about white perch, pike and even walleye. As proof of the river’s proclivity to produce pike, David from Merrimack Sports told me that just this week a regular flashed him a picture of a recently caught 44″, 22-pound trophy toothy! The angler who caught it was keeping a tight grip on that photo and the exact location but he did say he caught it on a dead shiner. There’s nothing new about anglers splitting the belly of a big shiner and letting the scent trail call the pike in as the bait lays on the bottom. Regarding the big fish/herring run connection, the size and numbers of holdover striped bass in a river system is directly proportional to how much forage a river will hold. One time, smelt factored greatly into that equation, but now it’s all about the river herring.

Massachusetts Fishing Forecast

The sure thing is stocked trout, which if you peruse the Masswildlife stocking table, you’ll realize have been put nearly everywhere. While less of a slam dunk, patronizing local rivers may pay off in perch or even a nearly 4-foot long pike! Shops are telling me that customers are beginning to stick their head in the doors asking if anyone’s catching flounder yet, but few seem to want to be the first. Maybe this week that first will be you!