Cooperstown, NY - Bass, Beer, and Baseball

[Lard Almighty]

My brother and I headed up to Cooperstown 9/20-9/22 for some fishing and to check out the Hall of Fame. We stayed at a nice little motel on Lake Otsego, which is right in Cooperstown. When I made my reservation, I also took advantage of their available special packages, and ordered the "Baseball and Beer" package, which included a six pack of craft brews, a commemorative baseball, souvenir beer glasses and mugs, two passes to the HOF, a voucher for lunch, and some snacks. Now, by six-pack I thought it would be your standard 12 oz. bottles. Instead, we arrive to find six .750 mL bottles of ale from Ommegang brewery. That's 4.5 liters of beer! Needless to say, my brother and I wound up taking most of it home with us.

We met up with our guide on Saturday morning in Cooperstown, at the south end of Lake Otsego. It was already windy by the time we got there, and it would only get worse as the day wore on. Our guide, Allan, a middle-aged man with a pronounced British accent, did everything he could to keep us out of the wind and on the fish, but with whitecaps frothing up the lake and the fish scattered, it turned out to be a tough day. My brother got the worst of it, as he only landed one small smallmouth and two pickerel. Allan managed a bunch of smallies up to about 2 lbs. on tubes, and he caught just as many rock bass. He also missed a lot of fish, as the bites were very light and lazy. While he fished with finesse baits, I was chucking a big 1/2 oz. spinnerbait in golden shiner color. I was burning it under the surface, and had fish come up for it in the ultra-clear water. I wasn't getting many bites, but I was averaging bigger fish. I finished the day with 4 smallies, the biggest at 3.3 lbs., two pickerel, one dumb rock bass, and the big fish of the day: a sweet 3.7-lb. largemouth that smashed the spinnerbait at the end of a blowdown. I also missed another largemouth that may have been just as big when he sucked down a senko under a foot bridge and threw the hook. Allan remarked that it was the roughest he had ever seen the lake on a day when he was actually fishing it, and he has been there 15 years.

Sunday we checked out the Hall of Fame museum and drooled over all the memorabilia. Among the items on display were the bat used by Babe Ruth for his called shot, the uniform worn by Hank Aaron when he hit #715, and George Brett's bat from the infamous "pine tar game." After that we went into some of the shops looking for some deals on baseball cards, but to our disappointment found that all the cards and memorabilia were being sold at maximum retail prices, which we were not willing to pay. So, aside from a couple of t-shirts, we left empty handed, which was kind of a disappointment. I had every intention of blowing half my paycheck on baseball-related stuff I don't need, but I wasn't about to do it without getting some good deals.

I had my brand new GoPro Hero 3 with me, so you can expect a video in the next couple of days.