# November Smallmouth in Connecticut



## onthewater102

Took the tin out on one of the few power generating impounds in the state, Lake Lillinonah. Considering it was mid-November I was not expecting to find water between 50 and 55 degrees but it is cooled off so rapidly lately I thought the fish would be in wintry locations anyway, thankfully I was right. The lake gets down to about a hundred feet deep down by the dam and the center channel is about 60 feet deep for most of the run only in the upper northern stretches does it get shallower on average.

The power company draws the lake down five or six feet for a few weeks every November so property owners can maintain their waterfront and for them to do repairs so I was one of the few boats that was able to get out with the launch all but dried up. My old Mariner did not like the 23° that it was when I first launched and flooded on my first attempt to start it. So my game plan of riding around checking my waypoints and looking at the sonar to figure out where there were concentrations of fish got thrown out the window. I put the trolling motor on high and got over to the stream mouth cove alongside the boat launch. There were fish in 10 FOW willing to bite my 3.8 paddle tail swimbait, but they were all 12" 1lb class, not a bad start, but not what I was fishing in 23° weather looking for. 

After getting a few of the smaller fish I started making my way to a submerged roadbed in the middle of the stream mouth to see if bigger fish might be down deeper, and as its about the only structure on the otherwise silty flat it's always worth a look. Nothing there, but a few hundred yards past it out on the main part of the lake I catch a view of bait being pushed to the surface so I put the trolling motor on high and get over there. Nothing is interested in the 3.8" paddle tail, nor the 3.3 I had on my other rod. I try the bladebait I had tied on with no luck, but that was easier to downsize and on the first few casts I start getting bites but I kept losing the fish halfway up the water column probably just skin hooking them. Finally got a fish on the blade into the boat, a nice 2+ smallie, healthy and fat. At that point I took the 3.8 paddle off and tied on a 1/4 oz jig head with a 2.8" paddle tail and it was game on. The next two hours were fantastic, punctuated by a trip back to the launch to get my brother.

I regret not changing out the trebel hooks and split rings on the blade bait, as I lost the biggest fish on the day on the surface just outside the reach of the net, skin hooked again just like so many others but I can't complain. The bite died at 11ish, possibly coinciding with the dam being shut down, possibly just that time of day. I should have tested to see if they'd take a finesse jig with a crayfish body worked on the bottom, but I didn't, so who knows if I passed up chances on more fish. They scattered around a wider area when I came back around 2:30, some fish tight to the bottom still but many had suspended out in the main channel 20'-25' down in 50' deep areas and I had tunnel vision for the blade bait.


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## LDUBS

I enjoy reading fishing reports with details like yours. Thanks for sharing. Nice fish and nice photos. Well they are sideways, but still nice.


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## New River Rat




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## onthewater102

Uploading them off my phone without going through imgur, I'll get them fixed on the PC next chance i get.


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## SeaFaring

Nicely done! Looks like a great day. 


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## pbw

Wow nice job! The colors on those small mouth look amazing.


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## Jim

Nice job man! Thanks for the report! =D>


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## onthewater102

I went out on Candlewood Lake this weekend in an attempt to map areas with my autochart that we typically have late-season success in getting ready for a club tournament later on in the cold season and decided while I was there I would wet a line or two. The water temperature was about 49 degrees and you could tell from the algae all over the surface that the lake had recently turned over or was still turning over so my expectations were pretty low. Within the first couple dozen casts I caught two really nice fish including one that may be a personal best at 4 lb 12 oz out of 38 feet of water. 

I decided to stop and fish that one spot because I saw a large concentration of decent-sized fish in 35 to 38 feet of water on a flat adjacent to a relatively steep drop. I wasn't getting any love on the swimbait a 2.8 in Bass Pro Shops paddle tail keitech imitator, so I switched to the blade bait that now had new vmc hooks on it and was rewarded on my first cast with a 3 lb plus fish. Two casts later with the blade I found this girl:


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## SeaFaring

Wow! That really justifies getting out in the cold. 


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## LDUBS

What kind of fish finder are you using? 

Thanks for the new report. Keep em coming.


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## onthewater102

Humminbird 898, but I used to do the same with my 798. I go out and scan the areas I'm interested in then mark waypoints on the structures I find. Occassionally this time of year I find areas with enough large fish on them that they show up on the scans.

For instance, the red arrow is pointing to an arc from a bass that is feeding on the school of bait. See how the bait school isn't in a nice ball shape? More like smoke coming out of a chimney? They're responding to being attacked from below. Even though some fish from the bait school were breaking the surface of the water the bass going after them were 40 to 45 feet down. Circled in purple are all the arcs to the side of bass scattered on the tapering slope in the same area.

These fish are relating to the larger rocks on the border of a strip of a transition where the bottom goes from being hard to soft to hard again. A subtle structure but often seems to be a key one. Usually I'm marking more obvious structures like ledge rock, stone walls, old foundations etc, but sometimes its just an especially large boulder on a slope or a tree trunk way down on the bottom, but these guys jumped out as I caught them in the act of beating up baitfish.


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## LDUBS

Thanks. This is very educational for me. I have a hummingbird Helix 7. No side imaging but it does have down imaging, which I seldom use. Most of what I am doing is trying to find how deep they are in open water.


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## onthewater102

When i first started using the imaging I wasn't able to tell rocks from fish, I've watched a lot of youtube videos, particularly Doug Vahrenberg's videos, and it's made a world of difference in my understanding of not only the imaging returns, but the distortions you will undoubtedly encounter and the settings you need to tweek to correct them.

The side imaging gives me a downward image as well, so I usually don't use that setting, but I'm always running the traditional scanning alongside the imaging so I can compare and contrast the two.


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## LDUBS

Doug Vahrenberg's Tip's 'N Tricks videos are fantastic. Thanks for the recommendation. Next time out I'll be hitting the fish finder's "reset" button and starting from fresh. Haha.


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## New River Rat

Man, I love chasing winter smallies, however cold it gets. Those are fish that are well worth the effort. So far my coldest water temp for a caught smallie was 37º.


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## onthewater102

That's exactly what we were seeing this weekend, 37 degrees. 

Bite slowed a bit from last weekend, when we caught 30 in 1.5 hours, took us 4 hours for 29 yesterday, nothing under 14". Oddly enough the largest one, ~18 inches, was almost purple. It was thick and healthy looking otherwise.


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## Tinny Fleet

onthewater102 said:


> Took the tin out on one of the few power generating impounds in the state, Lake Lillinonah. Considering it was mid-November I was not expecting to find water between 50 and 55 degrees but it is cooled off so rapidly lately I thought the fish would be in wintry locations anyway, thankfully I was right. The lake gets down to about a hundred feet deep down by the dam and the center channel is about 60 feet deep for most of the run only in the upper northern stretches does it get shallower on average.
> 
> The power company draws the lake down five or six feet for a few weeks every November so property owners can maintain their waterfront and for them to do repairs so I was one of the few boats that was able to get out with the launch all but dried up. My old Mariner did not like the 23° that it was when I first launched and flooded on my first attempt to start it. So my game plan of riding around checking my waypoints and looking at the sonar to figure out where there were concentrations of fish got thrown out the window. I put the trolling motor on high and got over to the stream mouth cove alongside the boat launch. There were fish in 10 FOW willing to bite my 3.8 paddle tail swimbait, but they were all 12" 1lb class, not a bad start, but not what I was fishing in 23° weather looking for.
> 
> After getting a few of the smaller fish I started making my way to a submerged roadbed in the middle of the stream mouth to see if bigger fish might be down deeper, and as its about the only structure on the otherwise silty flat it's always worth a look. Nothing there, but a few hundred yards past it out on the main part of the lake I catch a view of bait being pushed to the surface so I put the trolling motor on high and get over there. Nothing is interested in the 3.8" paddle tail, nor the 3.3 I had on my other rod. I try the bladebait I had tied on with no luck, but that was easier to downsize and on the first few casts I start getting bites but I kept losing the fish halfway up the water column probably just skin hooking them. Finally got a fish on the blade into the boat, a nice 2+ smallie, healthy and fat. At that point I took the 3.8 paddle off and tied on a 1/4 oz jig head with a 2.8" paddle tail and it was game on. The next two hours were fantastic, punctuated by a trip back to the launch to get my brother.
> 
> I regret not changing out the trebel hooks and split rings on the blade bait, as I lost the biggest fish on the day on the surface just outside the reach of the net, skin hooked again just like so many others but I can't complain. The bite died at 11ish, possibly coinciding with the dam being shut down, possibly just that time of day. I should have tested to see if they'd take a finesse jig with a crayfish body worked on the bottom, but I didn't, so who knows if I passed up chances on more fish. They scattered around a wider area when I came back around 2:30, some fish tight to the bottom still but many had suspended out in the main channel 20'-25' down in 50' deep areas and I had tunnel vision for the blade bait.



Thanks for posting. Very interesting on the bladebait. I fish VT and NH in the summer and fall, so good info there.


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## onthewater102

Bladebait was the main producer for those 30 fish days earlier this month - but the current cold looks like the water will be hard by the time I get to it this weekend.


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## handyandy

onthewater102 said:


> That's exactly what we were seeing this weekend, 37 degrees.
> 
> Bite slowed a bit from last weekend, when we caught 30 in 1.5 hours, took us 4 hours for 29 yesterday, nothing under 14". Oddly enough the largest one, ~18 inches, was almost purple. It was thick and healthy looking otherwise.



Dang that's a nice box of smallies wish we had numbers in that size around me. I'm good with the rivers, and creeks I fish if get one over 14" if I have a day with a few over 14" it's pretty good. I get days with lots of numbers, but usually for every 10-15 fish one might be 15" or over.


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## onthewater102

Those were from the reservoir behind a power plant - miles away from the fast water from an area ~22 ft deep, so certainly not stream fishing. Quality is the name of the game in the cold water.


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## handyandy

wish I had a smallie fishery like that near by, only find them in some streams and rivers around here, none of the lakes/reservoirs around my parts support smallies. Been wanting to go down to dale hollow in kentucky after some smallies.


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