Fishing Lake Williams June 25 2010

I took Matt to Lake Williams in Lebanon, CT for his first trip there. It was tough fishing into a 5-6mph headwind and the fishing was sluggish. I caught a couple of fish by the campground and a few more fish further up the lake. By the North end lily pads I did pretty well with the Senkos. Matt was getting a lot of hits with the jigs, but wasn't having much luck hooking or landing them. I spent some time with him teaching him how to fish the senkos, but by then the fish weren't hitting them anymore. By that time it was almost 11 and we had to leave. Matt caught 2 small bass and a pickerel. I caught 13 bass and pickerel. Three of the bass were 17" long; one of them is pictured above. It is nice fishing with someone that can take pictures. He took a pretty good photo for his first time with a camera.

Fishing Lake Williams June 21 2010

I was able to get out yesterday afternoon for a few hours. It was a little breezy and of course I had to paddle into the wind. I made up my mind to put swimsenkos on one pole and regular senkos on the other. Anchoring next to the dam I tried out a few color combinations and caught a 15" bass on the blue senko. Until I cleared the small islands I was out of the wind so I fished the east shore and caught a small bass and pickerel. I caught a big (17") bass by the big rock half way up the shoreline and then paddled up to the lee side of the big island. There I caught a couple small and a couple good size bass. From there I fished the east and north shore until sundown. I only caught 12 fish but 8 of them were 15-17" long, almost all of them on senkos.

Fishing Amston Lake June 15 2010

Between work and family commitments I was able to get in a couple hours of fishing yesterday. There is a lot of real estate going on so I wanted to fish close to home and fished Amston Lake. I started around 10am and the fishing was real slow. The first 3 fish were an average of 6" long and took an hour to catch. It took a while to find the right pattern but once I did the fishing was slow and steady. Most of the fish were on the small side, but 3 of the bass were in the 11-12" range. The best fish of the day was a 18" bass on a senko like the one pictured above. By mid afternoon the wind was picking up and I had places to go. The final count was 16 bass, pickerel and a crappie.

Fishing Red Cedar Lake June 11 2010

I wasn't able to start fishing until 9am, so I wasn't sure how this would turn out. Usually I only fish early morning of late afternoon this time of year. I ended up catching a lot of fish, even with he late start. Maybe it was because it was a cool day without sun until around 2pm. I was surprised to see at least 3 other boats fishing the lake, one of the guys reported catching a 4 pound bass. I had a good day as well. No big fish but quite a few 15" bass and a bunch a smaller bass and pickerel and crappie. There were a lot of fish that got away and 3 or 4 tail-less grubs were pulled in, but when I quit at 3pm I had caught 20 fish. About half the fish were caught on swimsenkos and the rest on jigged grubs.

Fishing Gardner Lake June 9 2010

For a while Wednesday morning I was really doing well. I put the kayak in by the dam and paddled to the deep water with only a couple casts on the way. On one of those casts I caught a 6" bass. When I reached the place I wanted I started off with Yamamoto Senkos. Within 40 minutes I caught 5 (13-15") bass and a 18" pickerel and was really feeling good. Then everything stopped and I didn't catch another fish for 2 hours. The next fish was caught in the shallows in the midst of the lily pads. I fished the weeds for another hour without landing another fish. Oh well, that's fishing!

Fishing Pickerel Lake June 5 2010

The picture shows the lake's dam and the house that is right behind it. Saturday night the weather forecasters were all talking about great big storms, lightning, etc. They haven't been very accurate lately and the weather looked good at my house, so I went fishing. There weren't many boats on the lake for a Saturday night, probably due to the forecasters. The weather was nice all night, I ended up catching 8 small fish (bass & pickerel) in about 4 hours of fishing. All in all it was a very nice night.

Fishing Lake Williams June 4 2010

On Friday afternoon I went to Lake Williams. At the dam there is a bench placed as a memorial to an 18 year old named Matthew Kanter. As usual the fishing doesn't get good until I got to the northern end of the lake. I fished the west shore to ovoid the wind and to stay away from the water skiers as much as possible. I caught one fish opposite the campground and only two more before I got to the lily pads. The lily pads were full of fish and my new weedless technique worked well. All the bass and pickerel were 10-13" long, but you should have seen the one that got away. I hooked a 3-4 pounder that took me for a ride in the lily pads for about 2 minutes before he threw the hook. By 7:30 I had caught and released 12 more fish and decided to cross over to the west shore. There were a couple of aggressive fish in the middle of the lake that I caught. By the north end of the big island there is a small patch of lily pad and there we some bass jumping out of the water trying to catch flies coming off the water and the dragon flies cruising by. I took the weedless rig off one of the poles and put a green Senko on. The first cast on the edge of the pads was snatched by a 15" largemouth. My next cast caught another the same size. After a couple more casts I saw a big on on the far side of the lily pads jump out of the water chasing a fly. After getting in position the next cast on the edge only sank about 3 seconds before the line started moving into the pads. I set the hook and caught another 15 incher. By this time it was 8:15 and I started fishing my way back to the dam. Within 10 minutes I caught my 20th fish and stopped fishing.

Fishing Amston Lake June 2 2010

After catching 6 fish at Gardner Lake on Monday I needed a boost, so I went to Amston Lake. The night before I decided it was time to cut back on all the excess plastic bait I have. I threw out a bunch of stuff that I wasn't going to use and put some aside to try one more time before getting rid of them. I like to change up my bait and fishing style once in a while, especially when I feel like I'm depending too much on one style or pattern too much. So on this day I put away my grubs and senkos and went with Zoom's Chartreuse worm, Berkley's Swirl tail and Ribbon tail. The results of the day were pretty good. I caught 16 fish including bass, pickerel, perch and crappie. I don't know if was related to the different bait and patterns, but a lot of the fish were caught in places where I haven't caught fish before. There is a concept in this that will require more thought. The biggest fish was a 21" pickerel caught on the red swirl tail. The next time I go out I will try these baits and patterns to see if this is a fluke, or a lesson to be learned.

Fishing Gardner Lake May 31 2010

After the good day of fishing on Friday, I decided to go back to Gardner Lake on Monday. In hindsight I should have gone somewhere else. The lake was very busy with fishermen, jet skiers, power boaters and water skiers. I fished about 6 hours and caught 6 fish, 4 bass and 2 pickerel. All of the bass were 13-15" and the pickerel were 16" long. All of the bass and one of the pickerel were caught on Yamamoto Senkos. The other pickerel was caught on a jig with a big grub on it.

Amston Lake Fishing May 30 2010

On Sunday I went to Amston Lake to fish. I had a self imposed curfew of noon and I was ready to quit by that time. The day was moderately windy so I spent as much time paddling as fishing. Being a weekend there were a lot of people out on the lake. I spent about a hour in the lily pads and only caught 2 fish, but the main lake was pretty good. Using big grubs on jigs, I caught 20 fish. Most of the fish I caught were pickerel and the rest were bass. All of the fish were in the small to medium size category.