Though it doesn’t always get the credit, Lake Quinsigamond is one of Worcester County’s top-10 great fishing spots
With an abundance of rats, mice, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, bird seed, pet cats and garbage, it’s no surprise that coyotes are flourishing in our city and suburbs. Fly fisher Stan Borko, casting just downhill from UMass Hospital on Lake Quinsigamond, saw three coyotes walking the shoreline just behind him.
Far more impressive was Stan’s catching and releasing five rainbows and one remarkable 26-inch brown trout there, right after heat-wave temperatures dipped.
Lake Quinsigamond doesn’t get the ink it deserves for providing local fisher women and men with exciting, accessible and highly varied angling opportunities throughout the year. It’s definitely one of Worcester County’s top-10 great fishing spots.
For trout, which are stocked each spring and fall, the nearly four-mile long, 772-acre, three-sectioned lake’s secret is its cool, glacier-scraped depth, which reaches 90 feet down its north end center. But its name, derived from two Algonquian words, quinos and amaug, means pickerel fishing place and reveals its predominantly warm-water nature that dominates the shallow southern basin of coves and islands down to its connection with Flint Pond. The latter is weed-infested with milfoil.
Many big pickerel and largemouth bass are quietly taken there each year along with smallmouth, rock bass, yellow and white perch, yellow bullhead, black crappie, bluegill and pumpkinseed. But today, if native Americans were to rename Lake Quinsigamond, they might well call it the carp fishing place.
Sought by a small number of specialists, some of the largest carp in the state reside there as well. Our state record, a 42-inch giant that had the mass of a trophy striper and weighed an arm-straining 46 pounds 5 ounces was caught there by Shrewsbury’s Shane Felch in 2012.
Felch’s carp broke the previous state record of 44 pounds, 2 ounces, caught by Roger Pyzocha on the Connecticut River. One notable difference was Felch’s taking his fish with the legal option of a crossbow rather than a rod and reel. Sight fishing for them in shallow water during their spawning season adds another dimension and challenge to the sport. A boat and operating partner cruising the shallows at night with a spotlight were necessary to accomplish the feat. Remarkably, 2012 was the first year Felch had ever tried “bow-fishing.”
MassWildlife’s Marion Larson, who documented Felch’s record carp with her camera, noted that we actually have three different carp in Massachusetts. Each of them is an alien.
The most frequently caught are the common carp, Cyprinus carpio. They’re distinctively scaled over their entire body. Mirror carp, in contrast, show patches of bare skin between patches of large scales. That feature allows individuals to be readily identified — and named. Lastly, leather carp are bare-skinned without any scales. Though they’re the least common, many of them are reportedly taken here each year. Felch’s record fish was a mirror carp, commonly found in Europe.
Mirror carp are actually a variety of common carp developed through selective breeding and so named because of their scales’ reflective quality. They were originally developed to lessen table preparation time.
In Britain, where carp fishing has many passionate practitioners, several record mirror carp up to 75 pounds have been caught, photographed, released — and if over 40 pounds — affectionately nicknamed. British carp like Ravioli and Clarissa are as famous as rock stars among the passionate carp coterie. The world record mirror carp, though, to the lament of the Brits — is from Hungary and weighed 105 pounds, 14 ounces.
The world record common carp came from Lake Serene in the Champagne region of France and weighed 101 pounds, 6 ounces. As for leather carp, over in Britain, the largest ever caught was nicknamed Heather the Leather. She weighed 52 pounds.
Carp fishing techniques vary widely from bottom fishing with dough balls to even fly fishing, when carp are occasionally sipping insects dropping from peripheral bushes and canopy. While they primarily feed on aquatic plants, they’ll consume seeds, insects, crustaceans, mollusks and even fish eggs. They often just randomly suck mud bottoms and devour food that they see and ingest after spitting out the mass into the water before them.
I owe Lake Quinsigamond my personal thanks, though, to its abundant bluegills and pumpkinseeds. There, I was introduced in my childhood to the joys of “kivver” fishing with worm and bobber when my parents brought me to Maironis and Olympia Park each Sunday for Lithuanian picnics. I got hooked on fishing — and catching fish — an obsession that would last a lifetime.
Making up for drought conditions
Thanks to record rains, our depleted water tables are now getting back to normal after earlier drought conditions. With lakes, ponds, and streams at full capacity, we can expect MassWildlife to soon begin fall stocking of 65,000 trout. Expect plenty local action at Lake Quinsigamond, Alum, Asnacomet, Barretts, Browning, and Connor ponds as soon as the trucks get rolling any day now.
Bird feeding directive has been modified
On the bird front, the directive to stop all bird feeding has been cautiously modified. The mystery illness that affected large numbers of birds elsewhere in the east never really took hold here, and mortality in those impacted states has meanwhile declined significantly.
MassWildlife advises caution and cleanliness for those who would like to begin bird feeding again. That means disinfecting feeders periodically with a 10% bleach to water solution. If you do observe dead or sick birds at or near your feeder, you should take the feeder down for at least two weeks, and obviously clean it thoroughly before putting it back.
Intruder invades on Cape Cod Bay
My son Matt, my wife Helen and I had an unusual bird sighting Sept. 1 while fishing just east of the Canal in Cape Cod Bay. We were following flocks of terns and gulls that were diving down and hovering over baitfish trying to escape from stripers feeding on them from below. All of a sudden, a big, black, unusual bird flew in among them, harassing those that had caught baitfish, acrobatically maneuvering like a fighter pilot, trying to steal a meal. It was incredibly a magnificent frigate bird — a tropical species blown north by the hurricane winds. The last time the three of us had seen one together was in the Galapagos Islands.
Striper fishing continues to be rewarding across the Bay, too. Russ Therrien launched out of Green Harbor in Marshfield to make the run to Provincetown. Along the way, he jigged up mackerel for live bait and caught numerous keepers in 50 to 60 feet of water off Peaked Hill Bar.
The most exciting fishing though, right now, is arguably in Vineyard Sound for the mini-tuna that swim like ignited rockets and lure numerous boats to their brief surfacing for a quick cast or two. They’re frustrating to catch, though, because they key in on tiny baitfish like bay anchovies and often necessitate tiny lures or even flies to deceive them. Most fishermen mistakenly cast big plugs and heavy lines, which just put them down. So do racing boat motors from impatient fishermen moving in too close.
Oh, to have a school of fiercely feeding albies without another boat in sight is pure piscatorial paradise.
—Contact Mark Blazis at markblazissafaris@gmail.com.
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