# Western CT Lake Fishing 7.11.14 - 7.14.14



## onthewater102 (Jul 14, 2014)

Compilation of posts from 4 spectacular days of fishing

*Lillinonah 7.11.14*

Second great day on the water this year - and long overdue. Sizes were lacking, but the numbers were excellent. Met up with a friend at the a$s crack of dawn (5:15) for a really early start and it paid off. Took off from the Pond Brook launch with a plan of heading up the Shepaug branch to the northern most end in a hope to find cooler cleaner water. The water was cooler (75.5 deg when the rest of the lake was 80), but not any cleaner. Lilli is not marred by the mud the way the upper stretches of the Housy have been this year, though the algae is growing strong.

Fished the flats around the Pond Brook cove all the way out to the main river mouth without putting anything in the boat. Ran up the Shepaug branch and after picking off a few smallmouth my guest hooked into the pike he was looking for...after a few minutes of me clowning around with a grossly undersized net (very poor planning on my part) and him fearing it would be another broken line & lost fish I had the fish by the gills and he had his picture. Released quickly and it swam off. 







The next several hours was a spattering of everything available on Lilli - 5 or 6 good sized crappie, about a dozen perch mixing white and yellow (we saw several schools of 100+ yellow perch all 5"-7" long), largemouth & smallmouth. Unfortunately not having fished it at all this year we never really dialed into the smallmouth schools, so our catch sizes weren't that impressive, but the number of fish we pulled in was bordering on exceptional given how clear and sunny a day we were dealt. Best was a healthy 2.5lb largemouth on a 4" jerkbait on the main channel side of a weed edge, though another good one grabbed a black jig pitched to a dead pine tree before it could drop more than a foot. Early morning the alewive jerkbait imitations were the king but as the sun burned out the shoreline shade the dropshot was the ticket. I think for the first time ever I caught more largemouth than smallmouth out there.






Great day, nice to get out with a new (to me) CTF member, nicer still he caught the pike after having driven over an hour (leaving at 4:00AM) on the hope we might find them. The pictures don't do the pike justice - it was a very heavy fish for it's length and obviously was doing well for itself until it found us. In a show of good form he wanted it back in the water quickly so we didn't get a weight but I would guess it was between 7 & 9lbs.

*Waramaug 7.12.14 & 7.13.14*

Was fishing with my 2 yr old both evenings - 7:30-8:15 on the 12th & 5:15-7:15, so I apologize for the lack of pics but there's enough going on in the boat when I've got a fish & he's interested that I'm not pulling out a smartphone to snap a pic. 

Saturday's bite was all dropshotting a green with red & black flake 4" ringed worm on steep banks the same way I was on Lilli - casting to ~4' of water from 25~30' on a tight line, letting the lure fall on a pendulum track toward the boat, hitting bottom somewhere between 6' and 10', reeling the slack then popping it up after a few seconds and letting it settle somewhere 12' - 20' depending on the slope, retrieve cast & repeat. Most of the fish were deeper than 8'. Best on the night was better than 5 lbs for sure (I was able to fit my gooney fist in it's mouth) with quite a few other quality fish in a total of 22. 

Sunday the dropshot was yielding a lot of 12"er's, but nothing sizable - so I hit the motor and headed to Arrow Point which had a good breeze blowing on it from the southwest (and a good view of any approaching thunderstorms.) Got a quick two close to the tip of the point on a blue wacky senko with green flake on a 1/8oz wacky hook. Oddly the fish weren't hitting on the edge of the weed clumps but out in the open areas (not holes - open water) between the surface reaching weeds. I only stumbled upon them out there as the trolling motor caused me to drag my line while I was paying attention to my son. I couldn't make anything of it, so I packed it in & headed over to in front of the Boulders Inn. Blue senko was too slow falling on the deep edge of the sand bar where sucker brook dumps in, so I switched to a black w/red flake zoom shakey worm for something thinner that would get down faster - perfect choice. 

From there it was alternating between the wacky worm & a 5" jerkbait (I think it was a yo-zuri model) black on top with a silver belly running no more than 2' down. Used the jerkbait to cover the grassy flats between docks and the wacky shakey worm on each dock I encountered. Caught 35 fish in all, 3 were definitely better than 3lbs, nothing over 20" so I don't think I broke 4lbs on any of them. The decent fish were split pretty evenly between the wacky rig and the jerkbait. The best fish of the night I missed (of course) was easily 5lbs + it side swiped at the worm right on the surface as I was retrieving it from having tossed it to the corner of a dock - it got my son all excited & set him off on close to a minute of Wow wow wow's as he'd done back at hatch pond one night, which made my night. 

Jerkbait strikes were in 5-8 FOW over a grassy bottom & the boat sitting in 15 FOW.

*Waramaug 7.14.14*

Headed back out today after work having had such banner days the 12th & 13th, meeting up with a friend at the launch for a bit of company for the rest of the day. Water was reading about 79 everywhere, overcast with storms in the forecast and raining > 50% of the time we were out. Nothing in 25 years of fishing this lake has ever come together like today did.

My top 5 were 5 lbs 11oz, 5 lbs 4oz, 4 lbs 5oz and two fish which were easily 3 lbs (due to it raining so hard we didn't bother weighing the "smaller" 3 lb fish, and didn't pull the phone camera out for the 4 lb fish either.) Again, I seem to find the skinny fish, judging by a pic of the big one laying against my shoe I would say it was between 22" and 23" in length - but not even 6 lbs... All told it was conservatively a 21 lb bag, realistically, if the unweighed fish both came in at three and change, it was upwards of 22 lbs...

Pattern was much the same as the last three days - jerkbait in the weedy shallow flats, wacky rig around the pronounced structure (docks, laydowns etc.) and drop shot in the deep water. The largest fish was taken on the dropshot, the 2nd 5 lb fish on the 4.5" jerkbait and the 4lb fish on the wacky rig. My partner put together another fine day, with numerous bass in the 2 ~ 3 lb range as well. I didn't keep an exact count, the total # between us was comparable to my solo trip the night before, but the sizes were night and day bigger.

We managed to time it perfectly, getting off the lake just as the thunder was rolling in. This is my 4th time fishing with this particular partner, and EVERY TIME it has rained - this last two times to say we were wet was an understatement, but it seems our collaborations on the water tend to end that way. All thanks to weather, no one ended up swimming accidentally, though looking at either of us you couldn't tell that.

Oh yeah, and the fish:

5.4 - 2~3 FOW Yo-Zuri Black/Silver Jerkbait





5.11 - 8~10 FOW 4.5" Green w/ red & black flake Ringed worm dropshot (for reference it is exactly 4" from my pinky knuckle to my index finger knuckle - this was one skinny long fish)






Now...to stop going out fishing and focus on finishing the boat!!!!


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