CTFishTalk.com: Colebrook River Lake 07/07 - Connecticut Lake Reports ( CT Lake Reports ) - A Community Built for Connecticut Fisherman.

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

On Saturday, rmflint (aka Ryan) and I decided to go fun fishing somewhere there wouldn’t be a crowd. After I checked the DEEP’s 2018 Fishing Tournament/Derby Summary http://www.ct.gov/deep/lib/deep/fishing/general_information/fishingtourbydate.pdf, we decided to head up to Colebrook and fish Colebrook River Lake. Ryan had never fished there and, because swimming is prohibited and the speed limit is 20 miles per hour, the lake hardly ever has any significant boat traffic.

The weather forecast looked really comfortable, although more sunny for fishing than I like:

We launched in my bass boat at 11:30 am and were on the water until about 6:30 pm. The lake was at a fairly normal water level. It was high enough that most of old Route 8 was underwater, but low enough that parts of it weren’t. The water temperature ranged wildly across the lake, from 77.5 to 84 degrees. As always, the water was really clear and there were very few weeds. We could see down 15 feet in most spots, depending on the glare.

Colebrook is much more of smallmouth than a largemouth bass lake, so I planned to throw a Ned rig craw or dropshot fluke in deeper water and a crankbait in shallower water. When we pulled up on our first spot directly north of the intake tower at the dam, this is what we saw on the fish finder:

That’s a ton of bait! So Ryan and I broke out our deep water lures and tried to get a bite. Yeap, the operative word there is “tried”. Despite our best efforts, we just couldn’t get anything to bite down in the depths at 35 to 50 feet. I imagine that if we HAD managed to haul a fish up from that depth, its swim bladder would have exploded out of its mouth, so maybe not catching anything wasn’t such a bad thing, but we were still disappointed.

We decided to try fishing shallower, so we headed down to the dam to try to catch a dam bass. I threw the crankbait and got a bite, but it was just a stupid rainbow trout. I haven’t eaten my fishing license worth or even my trout stamp worth of trout, yet, this year, so I tossed it into my livewell (aka the dead pool) to keep it fresh.

I DID get several follows by smallies all the way up to the boat, but they just wouldn’t commit and bite the crankbait. I hooked into another troutish-looking fish that leaped three feet out of the water when I hauled it up to the boat, but all that Ryan and I saw was a flopping, shiny, silver blur.

We began working our way up the west shore. Since we were fishing shallower, Ryan tied on a weightless wacky-rigged, five-inch, Green Pumpkin/Red Flake Senko and finally boated a smallie:

I was determined to catch one with the crankbait, so I stuck with it, even though Ryan continued to boat little smallies with the Senko. It took another hour, but I finally boated my crankbait smallie:

After that, I did tie on a Senko and began catching little smallies, too. However, Ryan caught what turned out to be our lunker smallie with his:

Yeap, it was probably only a two-pounder, but we had a fun day on the lake.

And the trout? Well, here it is in the livewell after I got home:

And here it is at breakfast in the morning, after I introduced it to my grill:

I love having trout for breakfast!
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hila2006 · Joined: 22 Jul 2011 Posts: 582 Location: Ellington

Hey Phil ,we were there on Sunday, had basically the same luck. Nothing deep by the damn, but did pretty well fishing the eastern shoreline over the rock line. Caught mostly small ones, but I ended the day with a nice one around 2-2/12 pounds. Love the quietness of the lake there. SHHHH, we did go swimming lol, too hot not to.

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

Hey, John! We saw a family hiding in one of the coves on the east shore and swimming from their boat. Colebrook has zero shade, which makes the water irresistibly inviting.
_________________
Don't forget to wear sunscreen and don't litter!

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

haha, yeah no shade is an understatement, it's plain hot most days. Nice quiet lake though, had to go there after spending Saturday on Highland dodging jet ski's etc. Next time your going to be local drop me a note and we can meet up or something.