This weekend was kind of a return to the places I used to fish.
Candlewood, for one. Love the fishery, and considered it my home waters for the better part of two decades. But I just can’t put up with the crowds any more, and being limited to fishing weekends for the most part, I almost never make it out on ‘the wood’ these days. Maybe that’ll change after I retire again in the next year or so.
Meanwhile, Alex and I took advantage of the poor weather day forecast for Saturday and hit it early, in search of smallies. We found ‘em in the predictable places — off points with scattered weed growth. As could be expected under the dark skies and occasional downpours, the spinnerbait bite was pretty good. Surprisingly, the soft jerkbait bite, wasn’t nearly as good.
Also surprisingly, one of the best smallies of the day came on when, flipping sticks in hand, we ventured into a very heavy expanse of shallow milfoil, in search of a kicker largemouth or two.
On Sunday, the plan was for Dave & I to start at “The Lake Who’s Name Shall Not be Spoken” for a quick hit of a couple spots with a high likelihood of producing a pig, then to put the boat back on the trailer and take the long ride to Mudge Pond for the rest of the day.
This would be a day tracing even deeper into my bass fishing roots than Saturday’s Candlewood outting had been. Before I ever fished Candlewood, if I had a “home water” it was Mudge Pond. I may have been there earlier, but I can certainly date my efforts there back to 1966! It’s the lake I really cut my bass fishing teeth on, and basically learned what I was doing.
But we started at TLWNSNBS, and while I haven’t been fishing there as long as at Mudge, nor did I ever fish it as frequently as Mudge, my history there goes back into the late ’70s, at least.
We thought that Dave broke the lunker ice pretty quickly, but his big fish turned out to be a near-5-pound pickerel. Nice, but no cigar!
Not too much later, a huge mouthed, but somewhat skinny largemouth that looked like a 7 when I reached over the gunwale to get a grip on its lower lip, but turned out to be barely a 6, ate my jig & PiggyBack.
Within 20 minutes after landing that fish, with one more big pickerel and a couple rat bass to our credit, we were on the trailer and headed for Mudge. That turned out to be a pretty good move. Nothing picture-worthy, but lots of fish to about 3#, mostly from the pads, flipping a creature bait behind 3/4 oz of weight, or fishing across the top of the pads with a golden shiner, 5.75″ Fin-S Fish.
Question: Why the 3/4oz flippin weight? Speed or cover density?
I fish a pond that contains LM and SM. SM dominate -so far. I often catch them in the shoreline slop. They are there after the bluegills, the main forage.
Most of the smallies in C-wood suspend and key on alewives, or they occupy the deep ridges and humps (mostly old roadbeds and such), eating craws and opportunistically taking advantage of the alewives when they wander near a hump that reduces their potential escape routes.
The 3/4 oz weight is for cover penetration. Could easily get away with less where the pads are open underneath, but in plenty of places, there’s a lot of junk weed and stuff under the pads — especially in/around the holes where you want to let the bait reach bottom. Plus, a few hundred feet away, you might be flipping the same bait into matted milfoil.