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My wife and I were invited to a wedding up in CT this past weekend. I'm pretty lucky to have her, she found a house to rent for the entire week that was less than it would have cost to stay in the hotel for 2 nights just for the wedding. We were within walking distance of the 350 acre mountain lake. The original plan only involved me fishing for maybe a few hours on two days and I wasn't able to reach anyone local to confirm I could even launch my own kayak so I was hesitant to haul it the 300 miles. It didn't take long to realize how glad I was for taking it. The surrounding area was beautiful and at times I felt like we were visiting another country (a little reminiscent of Ireland). I was amazed by how many lakes there were within 20 minutes of where we were staying, but only found public access to one (in CT, I didn't buy a NY license for the lake right across the state line).
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I had to play nice with the wife, so I only got to fish 2-3 hours at a time, but we ended up going 5 out of the 6 days we had available. The park for the launch had a nice little beach that she enjoyed while I had my best fishing in quite some time. As a spoiler, this lake was an absolutely amazing Pickerel fishery. It is apparently known for trout as well, which is what most of the boaters were targeting. I was intrigued to see that their preferred method was trolling and many of the boats had downriggers. Probably because of what I found when I ventured out to the middle. The bottom contours were very interesting because of the mountainous terrain, seeing the bottom go from 70' to only 5' in a very short distance near the middle was pretty cool. Max depth that I saw when paddling across was an amazing 101'.
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So, on to the good stuff.
Day one started a little slow as I figured out where the fish were and what they wanted to eat. The water was crystal clear with visibility to at least 10', but it turns out they have a massive milfoil problem that grows so thick my DF would bounce all over the place from time to time. It was so thick in shallow (<10') water that it was hard to get a spinner or crankbait through clean. The day ended with a LMB and a pickerel on a black/chartreuse worm.
Day two started slow as I tried to again pinpoint where and what to fish. I finally figured out that the fish were easy to find around 12-15' where the density of the milfoil started to thin out quite a bit. It was conveniently perfect that the bottom happened to drop off quickly at that point, offering even better structure. The lure of choice the the rest of the week was a 10" blue paddle tail worm on a shaky head jig bounced along those edges. In the short time I had available I ended up with 9 fish. This was my 1st time landing 3 LMB on 3 consecutive casts as well.
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Day two was also the highlight day of the trip, landing a trophy 26.25" pickerel. He was an exceptional fight and took quite a few drag pulling runs, aggressive shakes, and lunges out of the water that had me fearing it would throw the hook. Even in the boat he didn't want to sit still. In the time I took to get the camera up he shook around and ended up with his tail pushed up the hog trough a little for the photo.
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Day three was even more productive with 13 caught, including this little guy, on the same 10" worm.
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Day four came with only 6 fish, but 2 more nice pickerel at 23" and 23.5". The day was cut short right after catching the larger pickerel. I took a pretty gentle push to spin myself back around and SNAP!, the plastic ferrule connecting the two halves of my paddle snapped in half. I was all the way across the lake and had a light wind in my face for the trek back to the ramp.
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Day five, after I had some time to calm myself from previous great day cut extremely short, I was very fortunate that the park staff let me borrow one of the paddles for their rentals free of charge. I only had a couple of hours to get all the way across the lake and back before it was time to get ready for the wedding. Plenty of time for 8 more fish, including a 22" and 23".
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My only regret was leaving my net at home. I had expected to catch mostly LMB. Pickerel are just too crazy at the surface for fish grips and trying to land a big one that way was pretty nerve wracking.
IMG_20140622_170538.jpgIMG_20140622_170858.jpg
I had to play nice with the wife, so I only got to fish 2-3 hours at a time, but we ended up going 5 out of the 6 days we had available. The park for the launch had a nice little beach that she enjoyed while I had my best fishing in quite some time. As a spoiler, this lake was an absolutely amazing Pickerel fishery. It is apparently known for trout as well, which is what most of the boaters were targeting. I was intrigued to see that their preferred method was trolling and many of the boats had downriggers. Probably because of what I found when I ventured out to the middle. The bottom contours were very interesting because of the mountainous terrain, seeing the bottom go from 70' to only 5' in a very short distance near the middle was pretty cool. Max depth that I saw when paddling across was an amazing 101'.
IMG_20140625_150614.jpg
So, on to the good stuff.
Day one started a little slow as I figured out where the fish were and what they wanted to eat. The water was crystal clear with visibility to at least 10', but it turns out they have a massive milfoil problem that grows so thick my DF would bounce all over the place from time to time. It was so thick in shallow (<10') water that it was hard to get a spinner or crankbait through clean. The day ended with a LMB and a pickerel on a black/chartreuse worm.
Day two started slow as I tried to again pinpoint where and what to fish. I finally figured out that the fish were easy to find around 12-15' where the density of the milfoil started to thin out quite a bit. It was conveniently perfect that the bottom happened to drop off quickly at that point, offering even better structure. The lure of choice the the rest of the week was a 10" blue paddle tail worm on a shaky head jig bounced along those edges. In the short time I had available I ended up with 9 fish. This was my 1st time landing 3 LMB on 3 consecutive casts as well.
IMG_20140625_174724.jpg
Day two was also the highlight day of the trip, landing a trophy 26.25" pickerel. He was an exceptional fight and took quite a few drag pulling runs, aggressive shakes, and lunges out of the water that had me fearing it would throw the hook. Even in the boat he didn't want to sit still. In the time I took to get the camera up he shook around and ended up with his tail pushed up the hog trough a little for the photo.
IMG_20140625_155302.jpg
Day three was even more productive with 13 caught, including this little guy, on the same 10" worm.
IMG_20140626_153832.jpg
Day four came with only 6 fish, but 2 more nice pickerel at 23" and 23.5". The day was cut short right after catching the larger pickerel. I took a pretty gentle push to spin myself back around and SNAP!, the plastic ferrule connecting the two halves of my paddle snapped in half. I was all the way across the lake and had a light wind in my face for the trek back to the ramp.
IMG_20140627_122540.jpgIMG_20140627_122608.jpg
Day five, after I had some time to calm myself from previous great day cut extremely short, I was very fortunate that the park staff let me borrow one of the paddles for their rentals free of charge. I only had a couple of hours to get all the way across the lake and back before it was time to get ready for the wedding. Plenty of time for 8 more fish, including a 22" and 23".
IMG_20140628_110604.jpgIMG_20140628_121226.jpg
My only regret was leaving my net at home. I had expected to catch mostly LMB. Pickerel are just too crazy at the surface for fish grips and trying to land a big one that way was pretty nerve wracking.
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