The return to Lakeville

Back in May, my last fishing excursion before the surgery that kept me off the water for a couple months, was to Lakeville. On Tuesday, I finally paid my favorite CT pond a return visit.

In May, I started out throwing an unweighted soft jerk bait along the shoreline, until I got to the first major extended bar, where I switched to a spinnerbait. Not sure if I subconsciously did it on purpose, but I followed the same pattern on Tuesday. And just like three months ago, I got my first fish of the morning on the spinnerbait. And it was a pretty good one.

Actually, this time around, despite the fact that the bar I was fishing had been stripped almost completely of vegetation, I caught my first four bass — all between 2-1/2 and a little over 3# — from it, all on that spinnerbait, in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes. But as strong as it seemed, that bite evaporated quickly. Given the time of day and the almost total lack of cover on the bar, Jimfish and I both suspected that these were likely holdovers from a night feed.

My Tuesday game plan was to fish my way around the perimeter of the lake, covering every shoreline related drop-off, point and bar, before moving to the off-shore spots after noon. I had to trash that plan early though, when the weed eating boat came out and seemed to be going willy-nilly, wherever the driver felt like going, around the shoreline. Following the weed cutter rarely produces anything worthwhile, so we skipped past a bunch of stuff I wanted to fish, because he started chopping it up before we got there.

I wanted to hit “Rich’s Rock” before that big, blue, habitat destroying demon got there, so I beelined for it. He still got there before us, but only seemed interested in clearing the near-shore stuff, while I was only interested in fishing the end of the bar, where the rock is. So we coexisted peacefully for 10 or 15 minutes. For all that effort though, we only got a couple fish there. Jim’s first of the day, on the big jig, and a microbass that really had no business hitting my drop shot worm.

When the weed eater moved on and appeared to be working the length of the southern shoreline, we moved off shore to fish humps and the area we refer to as ‘the extended bar.’ That’s the last time I’ll forget to put my map chips back in the Elements after updating them. Especially in their mostly denuded, vegetation deficient state under a dark, cloudy sky, the humps proved hard to locate and impossible to identify the key spots on without my charts and named waypoints. I think we managed a pickerel or two, and that was about it.

Then the weed eater guy apparently got bored with the southern shoreline 2/3 of the way along it, and came out to start chopping on mid-lake stuff. By this time, we were convinced he was just screwing with us. We stopped trying to fish the offshore stuff and moved to the western bank. Other than two quality brown trout (one about 3 on a 1 oz jig and one in the 5 to 6# range that hit a 5″ worm on a 1/8 oz jighead as I was quickly reeling it in for another cast) we got nothing near the western shoreline. But when we went around the bend to the end of the southern shore that hadn’t been visited by the weed eater, we started to get a bit of action. I got one on the same 5″ worm/jighead combo the bigger trout had hit, and Jim got one and lost a bigger one, both on a Ozmo.

Meanwhile, the weed eater went in to dump his load, and never came out again for the rest of the day.

We had a couple key spots we wanted to hit farther down that bank, so we made the mistake of continuing through the area that the weed cutter had worked earlier. Not so much as a pickerel or a microbass for our persistence. That’ll learn us.

Finally, I cut quickly back to Rich’s Rock (zero) and fished through the water we’d skipped over in the morning (also zero) to the bar we started catching them at, five-plus hours earlier. I made one pass throwing the spinnerbait on top of the bar (also zero) before spot-locking us in deeper water off the end of the bar(not zero!). I occasionally moved 20 to 30 feet to get a different angle or move a bit deeper or shallower, but stayed out on the end of the bar for the next two hours.

Tried a little of everything, but all four good ones I caught and a few more I dropped, were on the drop shot. Jim got one on either the big jig or the Panhead. Not sure which. Eventually, the pickerel started to get a bit too active to put up with. Never had a bite off all day, until I had 3 in the last hour.

It was getting to be time to hit the trailer anyway, so we retraced our morning path in reverse, but stayed out deeper, and fished our way to the ramp. Jim got his last good one of the day on that pass.

Other than a trout troller and a couple guys who anchored up and fished live bait in one of the well known and popular trout spots, we were the only fishermen out on Lakeville on Tuesday. Pretty much only shared the water with the weed cutter guy.

Oh wait. How could I forget the ‘tooners. At one point when we were fishing shallow along the Western bank, casting to a laydown tree, along came a dual downrigger equipped, pontoon boat with two total jackwads in it, just cruising around, who went well out of their way to drive between us and the tree we were fishing, to ask if we were having any luck. This wasn’t kids — it was guys who appeared to be in their 60s or 70s. Thankfully, it was during the middle of the day, when we weren’t catching anything anyway, but that in no way excuses their rude and idiotic behavior.

I was happy with our total catch, but especially for me, the meaningful part of my catch (8 of my 9 bass) came in about 2-1/2 hours, split between the two ends of the day, and the middle 5 hours was kind of uneventful, except for the 2 sizable browns. We really expected more activity through the day, given the perfect (cloudy, intermittent rain, light and variable breeze) conditions. Still happy with the eventual outcome though.

-30-