Dancin' Harry

I was fishing with my friend Charlie quite a few years ago. It was the middle of the summer and a truly beautiful day. We started at about 4:00 in the afternoon. It was a weekday and the lake was pretty quiet. We were on Lake Lilinonah. It is a section of the Housatonic River which has several dams.  As the sun was getting low we were in a quiet cove. It had been a fairly good day. We had each caught a few bass, largemouth and smallmouth, but nothing big.

            My favorite is top-water fishing. With the sunshine, we had been fishing mostly with plastic worms on the bottom. Now that the sun was low I decided to tie on a jitterbug.  I had thrown five or six casts when Charlie said he did not think jitterbugs worked on this lake. No more than five seconds later a splash sounded like a person had jumped in. A large smallmouth had smashed my lure. He shot straight up out of the water and danced about thirty feet across the top of the water. Then as quickly as he had hit, he spit out the lure and disappeared.  We were both gasping and laughing.  When we regained our composure a bit, Charlie named that fish “Dancin’ Harry”.

 This is actually a true story! I was there!