CTFishTalk.com: Lake Basile 05/22 - Connecticut Lake Reports ( CT Lake Reports ) - A Community Built for Connecticut Fisherman.

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

DirtyDawg10 (aka Derek), Daryl (aka Daryl) and I got up before sunrise to fish Lake Basile in Simsbury. Daryl had to leave early, but Derek and I stayed on the water from about 6:00 am to 2:30 pm. Most of the shoreline has no public access. You have to enter the water from the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail. We had to hike our boats and fishing gear about 100 yards to the pond. Fortunately, it was overcast and comfortably cool all day. There was little to no wind until the afternoon, when a south breeze began to blow and create ripples in the water. That was a very good thing for me, because I had forgotten my sunglasses in my car. Calling Basile a "Lake" is a gross overstatement; it's just a pond. It's shallow all the way across with unnavigable shallows and a beaver lodge on the north end, and a spillway on the south. I think that the deepest spot I saw was less than five feet. We didn't see any beavers, but saw a few muskrats and some good sized fearless snapping turtles. I had my hand in the water and when I looked down, there was a foot and a half diameter snapper's head right next to it. Yikes! The water was warm and clear all the way down to the still mostly dormant weeds covering the bottom. My guess is that the pond will be completely choked with weeds by midsummer. But if you want to take your kids largemouth bass fishing now, it's a great choice.

After each trying a few different lures, we threw mostly wacky five inch Senkos because the largemouth bass couldn't resist them. I ended up landing 47, Derek got 41 and Daryl, who left a couple of hours earlier than we, probably got 24. Unfortunately, the only bass over two pounds were my first and my fifth, which were each two pounds and five ounces. And we didn't see any other type of fish, although I saw a cloud of unidentifiable (to me, at least) fish fry suspended in the water. But we had a blast landing lots of bass and an extremely relaxing day on the water.

I was going to post photos of ALL of the fish that I caught, but I'll spare you that. However, here's a montage of the first 21 Very Happy

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DirtyDawg10 · Joined: 27 May 2009 Posts: 2238 Location: Granby, CT

It was a fun day for sure. Plenty of shorts and several keepers but like Phil said nothing huge. The largest fish I landed yesterday was just under 16" and just over 1-1/2lbs. I'm sure there must be some big ones in there but we couldn't get any to hit. Here's a pic of my 41...

...and here's a pic of a big one that jumped in front of Phil's boat just as I was snapping a pic of Phil fishing Shocked