[Michael]

A buddy and I did what we planned on doing for Opening Day, which was launch his canoe at Ball Pond and do some casting and trolling. Launched around 8:45am and fished til 12:30pm.

Of all the areas we hit, not a single trout!

My buddy got nothing on pink Power Bait and his traditional gold spoon and I wasn't hitting anything with a number of Rapalas. There seemed to be an early morning bite only because when we got out to the spot we like to start at, 2 fishermen on 1 boat were hitting them left and right on small Phoebes, but then the bite died off for everybody who were hitting them.

We were into a bass bite at Ball instead of any trout!

Shallow areas with weeds, structure, and docks is where we were getting largemouths up to 1 1/2 pounds. I hit a total of 7 all by lightly twitching a 7cm firetiger Original Floater on the surface. My buddy got 3 with a 5cm silver Original Floater, but was doing a different retrieve.

After getting tired of not being into any trout, we hit a few rivers.

[rvolkers]

MANY YEARS AGO! - During the 1950's, the state decided to make Ball Pond a "trout only" lake . . . a mecca for trout fishermen. It was thought that trout would thrive in the absence of other lake species. Rotonone was introduced into the lake, in an effort to eradicate all other plants and animals. AND THEN CAME (Eurasian water milfoil)! the state worked on the problem but the trout seemed to be few and far between!

HOWEVER! you brought up a very interesting point that not many folks KNOW ABOUT!

[b]Over the last couple years Ball Pond has had the highest catch-per-unit-effort from electroshocking of any lake in the state in terms of both size and numbers of largemouths.

“It’s a veritable bass angler’s gold mine,”[/b]

[PECo]

Back in the Spring of 2010, I spoke with a couple of DEP guys doing a bass fishing survey at Batterson Park Pond, who told me that they had just electrofished Ball Pond. Based on their glowing recommendation, I fished Ball Pond the next day. Here's an excerpt from my report: