Fishing Lake WIlliams Sep 1 2010

My birthday present from me, to me, was to go fishing. I know, a real surprise. I went to Lake Williams and the weather was great. I had a big grub on one pole and a senko on the other. After the usual trial and error I settled on a chartreuse grub and green senko. I usually try to work the grub just above the weed line. This involves a bit of guess work, counting 3-5 seconds after the jig hits the water and then retrieving. But today I let the jig hit the bottom, let it set a couple of seconds and then retrieving. I was only getting weeds on the grub 1 out of 5 times and a lot of hits came as soon as I lifted the jig off the bottom. I caught most of the fish in the weeds at the north end of the lake using this technique. I ended up with 13 bass, 2 pickerel and a sunfish. Four of the bass weighed 2 pounds.

Fishing Lake WIlliams July 30 2010

We took a trip to Lake Williams this morning. It was a perfect morning, cool without a breeze. Fishing was slow, we would catch 4 fish on a green senko and 100 yards down the lake they would only hit a red one. They stopped biting around 9am and we quit fishing at 10:30. Matt caught 6 and I caught 13 including the 3 pounder shown above.

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 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 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.

Fishing Ruby Cohen Park May 22 2010

I only had a couple of hours to fish the other day. So I went to Ruby Cohen Park in Colchester. The town purchased it a couple of years ago and it has a couple of small ponds that I've been meaning to try. I had been there before as a chaperone for my kids school trips. I was surprised to see that both of the ponds are 80-90% covered by lily pads.

When I got there there was a couple of women there. One of them was working with a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. It was real impressive watching her work with the dog. She would throw a float in the water for the dog to retrieve. The dog would jump in, swim out to the decoy, return and drop, shake and heel, all on command. I'm still trying to get my dog to stay off the table when I'm eating. It turns out that my daughter knows her. She is a dog trainer, the dog (Daphne)has won many competitions. She is from Colchester and she runs Hawk Nest Kennels.

All the splashing didn't hurt the fishing. In the 2 hours of daylight I had left I caught 6 pickerel. The catch of the day was a 22 inch monster that really gave me a good fight. The 8lb test line held up fine, even with all the weeds, but I have made up my mind to put some 14lb test line on my reel. I caught all the fish with weedless single tailed grubs and Yamamoto Swimsenkos.

Amston Lake Fishing April 21 2010

Took the kayak out to Amston Lake today. Fishing was good, as usual. I caught 20 fish using jigs and single tail grubs. Most of the fish were small (11-15") pickerel with a couple of small bass thrown in. I ended up with 3 tail-less grubs and 2 other so beat up that they barely stayed on the jig. Water is still too cold for the bass to get going I guess.

My Colchester area Lake Evaluations

Babcock Pond, Colchester (119 acres) is a very shallow, weedy, lake. The last time I fished it in 2008 the weeds were within 2” of the surface. I have not been back since.

Bashan Lake, East Haddam (273 acres) is a large clean lake. The boat launch is hard to get to and tucked away in a far corner. The lake is very deep and has a clean bottom. I have not caught many fish there, but I have caught some big bass and pickerel.

Gardner Lake, Salem (529 acres) is a very big lake, too big for me and my kayak. If there is any wind at all, this lake gets too rough for me to fish effectively. I have only fished about 1/16th of the lake, without much success. I mostly ended up with a bunch of tail-less worms. The deep lakes confound me, so I don’t fish them any more.

Lake Haywood, East Haddam (174) is a very nice lake. The boat launch is pretty far from where I like to fish. This is one of the electric motor only lakes, so it is a good place to go on a weekend because you don’t have to worry about jet skis or water skiers. This is a very clean lake with a variable bottom. It ranges anywhere from 2 feet deep to more than 30 feet deep. I find it can be a very difficult place to catch fish, on an average day, I catch 4 – 7 fish, and my high for this lake is 14 fish.

Holbrook Pond, Hebron (83 acres) I only fished once. It was very weedy and shallow and I didn’t catch anything.

Mansfield Hallow Reservoir, Mansfield (460) is a beautiful body of water with some great looking coves and bays. I watched a deer swim across a bay one morning. I have fished it when the reservoir was low and when it was high, but only caught a few fish. Everyone that I have talked to has the same story, big fish if you can find them, but few are caught.

Moodus Reservoir. East Haddam (486) is big, but not very deep. I have not had much success there, but others have. This is another lake that gets very choppy if there is any wind blowing. I don’t fish it very often.

Norwich Pond, Lyme (30acres) I fished for the first time this spring. I caught 3 – 4 fish, but the pond looked like I should have done better. Maybe because the water was still 55 – 60 degrees the fish weren’t active. I will try it out later this summer.

Pickerel Lake, Colchester (82) used to be very weedy. While viewing a property there I noticed that the lake wasn’t weed choked any more. I have fished a few times this year with pretty good success. There are a LOT of pickerel there, quit a few bass and even one big (5lb) bullhead that I caught. There are still a lot of weeds there, but the lake can be fished.

Red Cedar Lake, Lebanon (127) is one of my favorite lakes. It is not very deep, but it has a lot of stump cover. I don’t catch many fish there, but I do get some big ones there. You need to fish weedless or be prepared to loose a lot of tackle. The parking lot is very small. During the summer you’ll need to get there early or there will be no place to park. Weekends can be real busy with jet skies and water skiers.

Savin Lake, Lebanon (49) is small with a varying depth. I used to catch lots of bass there. The last 2 years I have only caught 1 – 2 fish per trip. I have not tried it this year and no one else seems to be fishing it either. I drive by there on my way to Red Cedar and have not seen anyone parked there.

Uncas Lake, Lyme (69acres) is very nice deep lake. It is electric only with a nice shoreline to fish. It is another deep lake that has confounded me. I did have a good day fishing the shoreline with flukes, but only caught a couple the next time I went there.

Lake Williams, Lebanon (272) is my other favorite lake. I go there often and it is almost
always good to me. It is big and mostly shallow. It can be very busy on weekend with jet skies, etc, but there are usually no problems on week days. The car top boat launch is at the dam; naturally the best fishing is at the other end of the lake

Fishing Lake Haywood

Today I fished Red Cedar Lake (Lebanon, CT) and Lake Haywood (Colchester, CT). I started off at Red Cedar and caught 14 fish, one was 18”, and the rest were small. Most of the fish were caught using a Berkley Gulp Goby fishing the edge of the lake. Most of the fish were under the overhanging tree limbs. I got drenched by a 15 minute downpour that the Weather Channel did not see coming.

I went home, changed my cloths, ate some lunch and rechecked the weather forecast. That’s when I decided to fish Lake Haywood. This was my first trip there this year. It is a big lake, deep, very clean, electric motors only and the weather cleaned up nice with a light breeze. I usually catch 5-6 fish when I fish there, but today I caught 16 fish in 4 hours, mostly on the goby and swimsenko. The bass were all 12-15” but they were very energetic. Every one I hooked jumped out of the water, 4 or 5 jumped and spit the worm out.

Goby(s)

Free Fishing In Mass, Vermont and New York State

Sunday, June 7th may son and I went to Massachusetts to fish. Massachusetts, Vermont and New York all have weekends in June that you can fish without having to buy a fishing license. Last weekend was for Mass., Vermont is June 13th/14th and New York is the 27th/28th. I decided to fish for largemouth bass at Littleville Dam on the Middle Branch of the Westfield River. We got there late (about 8am) and the wind really started kicking up at 9am, so we missed the peak fishing time. I haven’t fished here in 20 years, so it took a while to get going, we didn’t catch a fish for 3 hours. We finally found some small bass (8-9”) in a flat area 2-3’ feet deep. We ended up catching 10 fish on my favorite swimsenko.

Great Fishing at Red Cedar Lake

My son and I went to Red Cedar Lake (Lebanon, CT) today. We got a late start (7am) and fished until 1030. We did pretty good and caught 17 fish. He used crank bait and a top plug. I used a variety of Yamamotos. He caught the first fish, so he gets the good paddle the next time we go fishing. He really liked the top plug, so it looks like I’ll have to buy a couple more of them. Weather conditions were very nice, but the lake was crowded.