CTFishTalk.com: Lake Lillinonah 06/11 - Connecticut Lake Reports ( CT Lake Reports ) - A Community Built for Connecticut Fisherman.

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

I fished another tourney with my fishing partner, rmflint (aka Ryan) and our small bass boat fishing club. Due to a conflict with another club, our club launched second and fished from 6:30 am to 2:30 pm. When got on the water at the state boat launch ramp, which is about halfway up the long, narrow lake, the water temperature was 67.5 degrees. The water was murky, but the visibility was up to eight feet down in some places.The air was cool, but the weather forecast called for sunny skies and a high of 91 degrees in the early afternoon. There was little to no wind all day and, in the heat of the day, when it blew, it was welcome. Lake Lillinonah is an impoundment of the Housatonic River. The lake fishes more like a river when water is running through the dam at the lower end of the lake, but the water was not scheduled to run until this evening, so, today, it was a lake.

We decided to start the day by looking for warmer water on the north end of the lake by the Lover's Leap gorge. We stopped to fish a couple of coves along the way, but saw nothing but carp orgies in the shallows. When we got to the gorge, the water temperature was only 64.5 degrees! We fished around the shallows near the mouth of the gorge, but saw nothing but sunnies and a few dink largemouth bass. We fished up through the gorge and around the mouth of the Still River, but got hardly a nibble. We worked up the east shore about a quarter mile further and finally boated a fish, but it was only a dink smallie:

We headed back down the lake in search of warmer water. As we approached the steel bridge that's adjacent to the ramp, we decided to fish the west shore. Ryan finally boated a keeper two-plus pound largemouth bass when he let his wacky-rigged five-inch Senko drift down along the inside of the weedline that ran parallel to the shore. I said "finally" because this was our fifth tourney and, well, that was the first keeper he put into the boat. A short while later, I put our second keeper into the boat, albeit only a 12 incher, when I let my Senko drift down along the outside weedline.

We decided to fish the cove on the east shore that's adjacent to the ramp but there was another boat already in it, so we headed down the east shore. We didn't get any action, so we headed across and down the lake to try fishing a line of docks along the west shore. We didn't get any action there, either, so we headed back up to the cove next to the ramp. The other boat had left the cove, so we fished into it and back out, again. I caught another 12 incher and a two-plus pounder. Only a few minutes later, Ryan caught our fifth keeper, which was a much nicer three-plus pounder. We had a full bag! Whoo hoo!

In the last hour and a half of the tourney, we weren't able to catch another keeper. However, it turned out that we were the only boat in our club to have a full five fish bag. And the next biggest bag was only two small fish! Ryan's lunker weighed three pounds, 11 ounces, which was more than the weight of any other boat's bag.

Way to go, Ryan! I hope that your sunburn doesn't hurt too much.

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