Fishing Pickerel Lake April 26 2011

I got up at 3:30 this morning to hunt turkeys in Massachusetts with my dad. No luck with the birds and came home. I did some Real Estate work and went fishing. I just had to go fishing the temperature got up to 80 degrees. By the time I got out the wind had picked up and the temperature had dropped to the mid 70s. The wind had picked up to 10-15 mph and was coming right down the lake. Fishing was difficult and it sometimes required 7 or 8 paddle strokes between each cast, but the fish were bitting. I ended up catching 14 fish, pickerel and 3 small bass. The pickerel were mostly small, 2 were 17" long. Most of the fish were caught on a 4" white swimsenko. At least the trip back was quick with the wind pushing me back to the boat launch.

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.

Fishing Pickerel Lake May 13th 2010

Did not have much luck fishing the main lake today. The jigs and senkos I threw out there were not drawing much interest. A couple of guys putting their bass boat on the trailer only caught 1 fish (bass) in 3 hours. In 2 hours I caught 3 fish, one sunfish and 2 pickerel. One of the pickerel was 18 inches long and would have made the trip worthwhile by himself. Fishing picked up at the south end of the lake using a combination of flukes and swimsenkos trailed across the top of the water through the weeds. I ended up catching 15 fish. The biggest bass was about 13 inches. While I was fishing a couple of guys from the CT DEP came up in a boat asking questions for a state fishing survey.

Big Bass at Pickerel Lake, Colchester CT

( Pickerel Lake Boat Launch)

I decided to fish Pickerel Lake in Colchester, CT today. The weather was perfect, 65 degrees and no wind. I did not catch a lot of fish, but I did catch some nice ones. The first two fish I caught were 18-21” pickerel on a swimsenko. The next fish was 15” largemouth, then a 17” bass, another 15” and then a 20” bass took me for a ride. I love it when a big bass pulls my kayak around a lake. I caught another 15 inch bass and then they stopped biting. I ended up catching a couple rock bass, another bass and pickerel. Most of the fish were caught on Yamamoto Senkos

Fishing Lake Uncas and Norwich Pond

I fished Uncas Lake and Norwich Pond on June 17th. I caught a few (6) small fish along the edge, but nothing in the deeper water. I caught most of the fish on the Berkley minnow grub and lost a big one 19”+ on the swimsenko. I guess I’ll go back to the shallow lakes.

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.

Fishing Lake Williams in Lebanon Connecticut

On May 27th I fished Lake Williams, Lebanon CT. I fished from 3:00pm to 8:30pm. The wind was light, must there was a misty rain about 50% of the time and it was about 55-60 degrees. I caught 7 fish and then nothing for a couple of hours. At 8:00pm they started biting again and caught 5 more. I used a lot of worms, creatures and top plugs. About half of the fish were caught on a swimsenko.

Lake Williams May 22

I fished Lake Williams Friday, the 22nd of May. I got to the lake around noon and fished in moderate wind (8-12) wind for about 6 hours. Using Yamamoto Senkos and Swimsenkos I caught 8 pickerel and 12 bass. The biggest bass was about 15” and was caught in a shallow water (10 – 14”) lily pad field. A passing fisherman in a canoe was having getting lots of fish drifting with the wind using crank bait and lures.

Lake Williams

I went to Lake Williams (Lebanon, CT) yesterday. It does not have a boat launch, but has an informal car-top access from the dam on Route 207. It was pretty windy for most of the afternoon, so I had to hug the sheltered shore. When it was cloudy I was catching fish on a blue powerworm. When the sun came out, they wouldn’t hit it. I eventually found a swimsenko the bass liked, the pickerel were hitting my favorite fluke. I fished about 6 hours and caught 15 pickerel and 5 bass.

Pickerel Lake

I fished Pickerel Lake (Colchester, CT) this afternoon. The lake is well named, I caught 10 pickerel and 4 bass. The smallest pickerel was about 15”, the biggest was about 30”. All the bass were small, about 9”. I used a small fluke and jigged a swimsenko. I think it is a mostly shallow lake with lots of good cover for the fish. There is a good boat launch, with limited parking.