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| Canadian Geese flocks overhead on Pachaug |
I woke up without an alarm going off at 5:30am and thought I am either dreaming or going fishing today. After a minute, I realized I was in fact going fishing! So I headed for the coffee and thoughts of fishing a new place for the first time excited me. My friend Jon sent me a text to let me know he was awake this time, and on time. He drove to meet me at my place, and was early but as Laura and I had just closed on a new house a week before, so I showed him around and then we were behind schedule. Jon works in the summer for Connecticut's DEP, recently renamed DEEP (environment and energy), and I asked him if he knew where the launch was for Bantam Lake. He said let's Google it, so we broke out our phones as we sat in the idling truck... come to find out the DEP lost their priviledge for public access for Bantam lake so we went through our bucket list of other options and decided on Pachaug Pond located in Griswold, CT off of route 138, maybe 2 miles from I395. Our target species was Northern Pike and my goal was to put at least one in the new net a picked up a few days before.
Pachaug Pond was about a forty minute drive from Portland, and the DEP has a decent launch site at the north end of the pond. A paved access road leads to a concrete ramp and a parking lot that can handle about 40 vehicles. The pond covers 841 acres and is surrounded by a mix of trees and homes. Being that it is past labor day, there were only two other vehicles in the lot and not the typical mob scene of mid summer. The first lesson on Pachaug pond is to stay to the right of the giant orange warning sign, it is about a foot deep to the left of it according to my hummingbird fish/depth finder. The pond is aptly named due to the fact that I found depths of only 12' max.
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| Perch on Rapala Jointed X-Rap |
Jon and I had a promising day ahead of us with overcast skies and a light mist that in my opinion wouldn't qualify for a rain shower. Since my boat had not been used in the past two weeks as Laura and I had buying a house and moving in to deal with, I hit the gas to get some fresh fuel in the lines before taking a cast. We began by fishing a deep shoreline on the west side of Pachaug, which we fished with barely any luck with the exception of one small bass that Jon caught on a mister twister style jig. During our speed jaunt, I noticed some offshore humps in the middle of the first large bay area west of some ski bouys. So we set our lines out trolling over the varied bottom. I hooked up with a fish that I thought was a mat of weeds on my line, which ended up being a very nice sized perch. We continued trolling and Jon hooked into a nice largemouth bass. Jon said, "Get the net," and as I fumbled to get the net out from under what seemed like everything, I heard Jon let out an "Awww" as the fish jumped a second time and tossed the hook. Despite the fish freeing itself, we knew that this place was showing some promise.
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| My first LMB on Pachaug |
We noticed a boat heading for the point Jon and I wanted to fish. Luckily he went past the point into a cove and began fishing some docks. We reeled in and motored closer, beginning a new troll about 100 yards before the point. As we approached the point, one of my rods bent over that I had re-rigged with a spinner bait after Jon's missed bass that had taken a spinner. A decent sized largemouth emerged from about ten feet of water just before the point. After releasing the bass, I thought for sure we would be into some more fish, but we made it all the way to the south end of the lake without another bite. The south end of the pond had a considerable amount of vegetation and despite being shallower than the north end of the pond was cooler due to the outflow of Hopeville and Ashland ponds which all connect to the Quinebaug River.
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Jon hoists his 32" pike for a pic.
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After casting to every dock, lilypad group, and every spot that looked good without any luck, Jon and I both agreed that trolling was the way to go. Almost every fish we hooked up with was from trolling, so we sat down, put the rods in the holders and trolled back up the lake along a weed edge I found on the fish finder. Abouth 150 yards off the island point, Jon's rod bent over. I reeled in my line to clear any potential tangles as Jon fought his fish. It stayed down and I had a good feeling it was a pike. After seeing the long silhouette in the water, it was confirmed a pike, and a good one at that. I was happy to put the pike in the belly of my new net to break it in. After that fish, we were all smiles, and knew we had found a new dig. For the remainder of our outting, I tested out a new lure, as Jon stuck to his guns and caught four more fish before we called it a day.
