Eric Rosario.com

Weather: Sunny/Windy
Water Temp: 59+ - Degrees

Got invited to fish the infamous Rip Van Winkle Hudson Open Tournament as a non-boater. Being mostly familiar with lakes it was a challenge and an honor to fish along side one of our club veterans in a major open. It truly puts your skills to the test and being so competitive I was looking forward to a new challenge.

My partner and I must have launched about 7:30AM doing almost 90Mph down the Hudson to a few spots my buddy was familiar with. Our speedy trip quickly came to a hault as we hit a dense patch of fog that caused our visibility to become zero. We started fishing some shoreline until the fog began to dissipate. After the fog was gone we were able to continue our run to a cove. After a few hours in the cove produced no fish we decided to fish a near-by cove that was near the launch.

With more or less 2 hours left in the tournament I landed my first and what turned out to be my only fish, just shy of 3lbs. As we continued to work the shoreline that I landed that fish on, another team moved up near us to take that spot and started landing fish. When we attempted to swing around to the spot the other team basically dropped anchor, not giving up the spot with the fish. We probably should of stood there but who would have known there was a school of fish there with all the bad luck we had been having all day.

We ended the tournament with one fish. I took it in to weigh it just to know how heavy it was and it felt good having landed something rather than nothing. Many anglers walked away with a big fat donut while others simply release the one fish they landed.

Weather: Very Cloudy/Windy
Water Temp: 65 Degrees

CHADWICK LAKE, NY -- Having not fished together in some time, my wife and I decided to hit our local lake Chadwick. When we arrived the water level had risen so much that the lake was no longer shallow and appearing empty as it had looked a week ago. We decided to troll to the opposite side of the lake because the wind was blowing very hard. We began by working the shorelines, typical start-off tactic, with no luck. I then decided to start throwing cranks to the deeper side of the lake to hook up with my first fish. Almost immediately I had 3 fish landed so we expected the day to be great!



The bite started off very aggressively and continued throughout the few hours we were on the lake. My wife hooked up with a few nice slabs picking them off rocks and weeds. We both tried catching fish on soft plastics with no luck. It seems the fish are still chasing after their meals. For the past two weeks this seems to be the case at Chadwick.



We fish from 10:30AM til 2:30PM ending the day with 6 fish total, my wife having lunker 3.2LBS. The bite was great but our trolling battery was basically dead from fighting the wind so we called it a day with the satisfaction of several fish. I lost one on a crank but it was nice to see it leap out the water and spit the lure out. :o)