CTFishTalk.com: Candlewood Lake 08/14 - Connecticut Lake Reports ( CT Lake Reports ) - A Community Built for Connecticut Fisherman.

PECo · Joined: 06 Oct 2009 Posts: 5203 Location: Avon, CT

I haven't had much time to go fishing, lately, because I've been traveling a lot. I did a little scouting run up the Connecticut River from Haddam Meadows with Dan1 (aka Dan) on 07/30, but the most notable thing I boated was my first ever rock:

On 07/31, JJay (aka Jason) and I fished Stillwater Pond from our kayaks. It was a hot, slow day. Although Jason caught a couple of small keepers, I caught only lots and lots of dink largemouth bass. Here's one of Jason's:

I was out of town for a week and then fished Winchester Lake with rmflint (aka Ryan) on 08/13. I don't want to say much about that, because I have a club tourney there on Sunday, but we might have killed it a chunk of banana dangled a couple of feet under a bobber. Wink

Wanna Fish (aka Carl) and I were comparing notes on our last trips when we decided to fish walking lures at Candlewood. We met at Lattins Cove at 7:00 am and fished until 3:00 pm. We could not have picked a better day to walk the dog. There was very little boat traffic; we were the first trailer in the lot. The air was warm, but not hot, and there was very little wind. What little wind we got was refreshing and quite welcome. Best of all, the sky was completely overcast almost the entire day. The water was clear down to only about three feet, but you could still see down to maybe six feet through the almost fluorescent green haze. There was a lot less weed growth than we expected, and a lot of what's there is dead-looking and even a little slimy with algae in many spots.

Carl ran us up the lake to a shallow hazard zone:

He got the first bite on an extremely inexpensive Bass Pro Shop Offshore Angler Inshore Series Walking Mullet ( https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/offshore-angler-inshore-series-walking-mullet ). The smallie blew up on it right next to the boat, but was able to shake the lure before we could boat it. I didn't get any hits on my Chrome Sexy Shad Strike King KVD Sexy Dawg, so we moved on to the next spot.

Carl got another bite from a smallie, but it was also able to spit his Walking Mullet. I think that he should put slightly bigger hooks on it. Just before 8:30 am, I finally got a bite on my Sexy Dawg that was just like Carl's first; the smallie blew up on it right next to the boat. However, it was unable to escape the three fine-wire treble hooks on the Sexy Dawg:

15 minutes later, Carl got his first fish into the boat, but, this time, he had hooked into a largemouth:

Yeap, it wasn't the prettiest or healthiest looking fish. After another move, a couple of more lure spitters and about an hour, Carl finally managed to get a smallie into the boat:

The topwater bite lasted until after 10:00 am. After it ended, we decided to try fishing deep humps. Carl spotted some fish holding on the bottom and suspending at about 20 feet, so I began throwing a crawfish jig, while Carl switched to a drop shot. The deeper fish wanted the crawfish jig:

Between humps, we tried fishing shallow with a tube and a wacky-rigged five-inch Senko, but only got small largemouth off of a dock and along the shallow weedline.

Our lunker ended up being a three pound, six ounce smallie and our five-fish bag would probably have weighed about 12 pounds. I think that I'll keep my Sexy Dawg tied on for a while; it's hard to beat a topwater smallie bite.
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