[PECo]

TurtleKiss (aka Kira) and I both wanted to fish somewhere neither of us had been before, so we drove down to Old Lyme and fished Rogers Lake. Kira's not a morning person and didn't plan to get there until 10:30 am. I inadvertently left my cellphone alarm clock on from the night before and accidentally woke myself up at 6:00 am, so I left for the lake way early. When I arrived, there were four trucks with boat trailers in the parking lot. The air was still cool, probably in the 70s, there were wispy clouds in the sky that provided some relief from the sun and there was a very slight breeze from the south. The boat launch ramp at Rogers Lake is nice:





While I was loading my gear onto The Other Woman, I messed around with my wacky rig setup, which was spooled with white 12 pound test Berkley Nanofil fishing line. I threw a green pumpkin/red flake five inch Senko into the stained water of the very shallow channel toward the overgrown area to the right of the ramp. As I retrieved it, I saw the big wake of a fish shooting out to it from four feet away, heard "Whoomp!" and it was gone! I began to wonder whether there are northern pike in Rogers, so I sent a text message to Kira, Fishface (aka Tim) and DirtyDawg10 (aka Derek). Tim let me know that it was probably a big chain pickerel that took the Senko. I launched in The Other Woman at 8:15 am. As I slowly made my way out of the two foot deep channel, I threw a white 9/16 ounce double hammered copper willow blade spinnerbait along the edges of the beds of lily pads that line the channel. It picked up a lot of slimy black decaying weeds, so I tied on a Bullfrog Zoom Horny Toad, instead, and threw it over the pads. I didn't get any hits. I noticed that a couple of guys on a bass boat slowly trolling up the lake were throwing spinnerbaits over what looked like clear water in the middle of the lake, so I figured that the lake must be fairly shallow with weeds on the bottom in that section. I headed south down the shallow east shore and began throwing the Horny Toad over clear water. 30 minutes after I launched, I got a hit and set the hook on a 13 inch keeper largemouth bass:



Whoo hoo! It had been hiding down in the weeds on the bottom in two feet of cool 78.5 degree water. 15 minutes later, I threw the Horny Toad at the shore in clear shaded water and seemingly right into the mouth of a bigger fish! I thought it was a pickerel at first, but as the fish pulled into deeper water, I could see that it was a decent largemouth bass:




Whoo hoo! The big girl was 17 inches long and weighed two pounds, 15 ounces. As I worked my way down the east shore, I noticed that the surface water temperature was rising quickly. When I got to the south end of the lake at about 10:00 am, Kira arrived, so I pedaled back up the lake to rendezvous with Dinghbat. She wanted to head to a spot in the middle of the lake that the Navionics chart says is 197 feet deep , so we headed north. It turned out that the 197 foot deep flat was only a 60 foot deep flat. I threw a drop shot with a four inch Roboworm finesse worm along the way, but didn't see any fish or cover for fish on the bottom with my fish finder. As I went around one of the two little islands near the middle of the lake, I tried to find the outside weedline and finally got a hit in 12 feet of water:



By this time, it was 11:00 am and the wispy clouds had begun to burn off, giving way to the blazing hot sun. The surface water temperature had risen to 82 degrees. It was getting HOT, and Kira was already starting to comment (aka complain) about the heat and sunshine. As I've mentioned before, I tend to get bored when fishing deep from a kayak, so we decided to head to the north end of the lake. I tied on a Perch Rapala Jointed Shad Rap JSR05 to troll along the way. When my fish finder showed that I had crossed over the weedline as I approached the north shore, I slowed to 1-1/2 miles per hour and got a hit on the Rapala:




I don't fish for crappie very often, so the 14-1/2 incher might be my Personal Best. We worked the shore toward the northeast corner of the lake with no action. The rising surface water temperature appeared to have killed the shallow water bite. We decided to head toward the northwest end of the lake and I did my best to troll the Perch JSR05 along the outside weedline. It wasn't long before I got a yellow perch:



Just a few minutes later, I got a feistier hit and boated a surprise 12 inch long white perch:




It would have been a keeper for me even in Hamburg Cove. 15 minutes later, I got a much better hit on the Perch JSR05. The fish immediately headed for the surface and leaped into the air. It was a decent largemouth bass! After four good leaps, I finally lipped it:




He was a solid 18 incher, but was skinny and weighed only 2-1/2 pounds. Although he was 3/4 of an inch longer than the big girl, he weighed seven ounces less. It's funny how the big girl pulled down toward deeper water from shallow water along the shore, and the skinny boy swam straight up to the surface and leaped into the air from deeper water. What's up with that? In any case, I had a blast fighting him. 20 minutes later, I got another yellow perch with the Perch JSR05:



Immediately after, I got another good hit on the Perch JSR05 from a big fish. As I pulled it up to the surface, I saw that it was a decent (i.e., at least 18 inches long) pickerel. It made a couple of runs before I got it next to the boat. Before I could gill it, it shook and managed to get a tooth on the 15 pound test P-Line Fluoroclear line, snapping it and taking my lure! Stupid pickerel! I didn't have another Perch JSR05, so I tied on a bigger Perch JSR07, but this time on my setup that was spooled with 50 pound test PowerPro braid. However, I still couldn't resist chucking my wacky Senko at the edges of a bed of lily pads and got a 12 inch keeper largemouth bass:



I worked the shallows around the northwest end of the lake, but got nothing except for some panfish nibbles. As I headed back toward the middle of the lake, I saw a blue sparrow dive down to try and pick an insect off of the water. It whiffed and ditched itself into the water. It wasn't able to get back into the air, so I pedaled over and rescued it:



Its wet feathers made it unable to fly. I tried to give it to Kira in Dinghbat, but it didn't want anything to do with her and flapped back into the water. It actually seemed to be trying to swim back to me in The Other Woman. So I rescued it, again, and we hung out together for a while:



I ended up putting it ashore to dry off. By this time, it was 2:00 pm and the bite had died completely. After striking out along the west shore of the lake, I decided to head back to the north end of the lake and troll around what I began to call "Crappie Cove", while Kira decided to head to the two islands near the middle of the lake. Right after I got back to Crappie Cove, the Rapala got me another decent crappie:




I tied a Yellow Perch Rapala Shad Rap SR07 onto my setup that was spooled with 15 pound test P-Line Fluoroclear, so that I could troll two lures at once. It got me a small sunny on the north end:



I worked my way back around the northwest end of the lake, but the bite was dead. At 4:00 pm, I sent a text message to Kira asking whether she was ready to leave and get something to eat. She replied that she had finally caught a fish:



Yeap, I know it's hard to see it, but there's a largemouth bass in that photo somewhere! Anyway, as I worked my way over to where Kira was, the Yellow Perch SR07 got a few more small panfish:





As we headed into the shallow channel that leads to the boat launch ramp, I threw my wacky Senko at the edges of the lily pads next to the channel. It got picked up off of the bottom by another decent pickerel, but when I got it next to the boat, it was able to bite me off. Kira began yelling out the score, "Phil 0, pickerel 3!" But I wasn't done yet. After I re-tied my wacky rig, I tossed the Senko into some brush sitting in less than two feet of water and it got picked up by yet another decent pickerel. And, once again, it was able to bite me off before I got it into the boat. I ended up losing to the pickerel by a score of 0-4. We got off of the water at 5:30 pm. I probably won't be able to fish for the next week, so it was really, really, really nice to get a full day out of the water in such a nice lake.
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[Zach0208]

Looks like a really nice day!

[knowfish]

Nice report and great pictures as always. Turtle Kiss will have a lot of invites to fish after this.

[NWDarkcloud]

sorry I missed the day doing boat matanace ..awsome crappy some of the bigger 1s ive seen in a while
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I Love to fish......Not a big fan of sitting in the boat alone ....the Conversation and the company make it perfect

[SAP284]

Sounds like an awesome day Phil. My girlfriends friend lives on the lake and keeps telling us to go down there and fish it. Now I definitely need to head there and at least give it a shot.
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Steve

[JJay]

Looks like a great day out ! Good job

[DirtyDawg10]

Sounds like a great place...thanks for the report!

[SeaDog1]

Hi Phil,

Great report

SeaDog1

[Michael]

Awesome job Phil! Nice calico and bass!

[PECo]

Hey, Michael, I ran over to Dick's to pick up some more Perch JSR05s and saw that the Perch JSR07s were on clearance for $3.97, plus another 50 percent off, so they cost only $1.98 each! I bought all six of them.
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[Michael]

The color Perch in the Rapala lineup has always been one of my most productive ones. SSR, JSR, F, J, and FLR are the primary Rapalas I use with the color Perch. A Perch SSR-7 caught me my PB 8 pound 1 ounce largemouth.

[PECo]

Rapala might be discontinuing the Perch pattern, at least, for some of its lures. It doesn't appear on the Rapala website as a pattern option for the JSR07.
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[chud059]

I was at Dicks in Manchester tonight and they had some rapalas on an end display but the selection was few and far between. They had a lot of deep water ones but I have no interest in those from the shore. I am waiting for my $50 cabelas card and will probably order some on line. I like the ssr's and want to try the jointed ones.

[PECo]

The Perch JSR05 is my favorite Rapala lure right now. It has enough action when trolling that you can easily tell when it's fouled.
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[Michael]

Any weight or length x girth on the bigger calico and the white?