CTFishTalk.com: East Twin Lake 07/23 - Connecticut Lake Reports ( CT Lake Reports ) - A Community Built for Connecticut Fisherman.

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

My bass fishing club tourney at East Twin was on Sunday. Sunday was an almost identical day to last Tuesday, when I pre-fished the lake with my buddy Sam, except that the surface water temperature was a scorching 79.5 to 81.5 degrees. The tourney day was from 6:00 am to 2:00 pm.

My tourney partner, rmflint (aka Ryan), and I planned to fish the deep outside weedline at a depth of eight to 18 feet. We fished the end of the point in the middle of the lake, first, and I caught a three pound, one ounce largemouth bass that ended up being the tourney lunker on my third cast. It hit my jig with a satisfying thump about 10 feet deep.

Now, I have to admit that while I had skirted jigs with craw trailers tied on, I ended up catching all of my fish with a four or five inch Savage Gear 3D Crayfish on a 1/6 ounce Z-Man Power Finesse ShroomZ jighead:

I colored the bottom parts of the orange claws with a blue Spike-It Crawlic Dip-N-Glo marker. I've always been more of a finesse fisherman than a power fisherman, so the light jig fished on fluorocarbon line is more my style than throwing heavy, skirted jigs on braided line.

After the first fish, the deep bite wasn't working, so we tried fishing shallower, in six to eight feet of water. I caught the second fish really shallow, next to a boat launch ramp on the point. The bite was still slow, so we hit the end of the point, again, before heading to the edges of the flats in the northwest corner of the lake. I caught the third and fourth fish in eight to 13 feet of water as we headed toward the west side of the lake. Ryan caught our fifth keeper with a skirted jig and trailer in a boulder field in only four to five feet of water. We had a full bag before 9:00 am! Whoo hoo!

After we had our full bag, we began to relax a little bit and explore the rest of the lake. The bite continued to be slow; actually, it got even slower. We culled one fish before heading over to try the docks at O'Hara's Landing Marina. Wow! We pulled six or seven keepers out from under the docks, before a marina employee very politely asked us to stop fishing around the docked boats. Now, as much as I enjoyed pulling a bunch of fish out from under docks, when a dock owner asks me to stop fishing under their dock, especially when they ask politely, I do.

Something Ryan and I noticed about the fish we boated is that they were really beat up. Many had holes in their mouths, one had a bad eye and one had some nasty-looking injuries. The worst one was totally missing the joint on one side of its jaw. I was relieved when we were able to cull and release the sorry-looking thing.

Ryan and I explored the northeast cove a bit and tried the shallow docks along the east end of the south shore, but only managed a couple of more fish in deeper water. In the end, it didn't matter, because we ended up winning the tourney with only a 12 pound, two ounce bag, along with winning the lunker pool with the three pound, one ouncer that I caught at the beginning of the day.

My only regret about the way I fished throughout the day is that I didn't try drop-shotting or Texas-rigging. Next time, I'll focus more on keeping my lures in the zone for longer periods of time.
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markm · Joined: 22 Jul 2014 Posts: 17

Love your reports PECo and congrats on the win.

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

hila2006 · Joined: 22 Jul 2011 Posts: 582 Location: Ellington

Awesome job Phil!!! Nothing a good tourny win. Only been to East Twin once. Has a lot of fishing traffic for sure.

Scorpio · Joined: 24 Jul 2013 Posts: 73

Congratulations and awesome report as usual!!