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Author:
PECo
Date:
Jun 25, 2018
Subject:
Congamond Lakes 06/24
Message:
I fished the Empty Lake Bassmasters tourney at Congamond with my tourney partner rmflint (aka Ryan), yesterday. Neither of us had a chance to pre-fish it. In fact, Ryan missed last year’s tourney there, so it was his first time on the lakes. The tourney was from 6:00 am to 2:00 pm. We launched at the North Launch in Southwick, Massachusetts. The weather forecast was pretty good, but with electrical storms after the tourney ended in the afternoon: [img:b13632c1fd]https://imageshack.com/a/img922/1162/c4zOEJ.jpg[/img:b13632c1fd] We launched after everyone else, because [i:b13632c1fd][b:b13632c1fd]someone[/b:b13632c1fd][/i:b13632c1fd] was late to the ramp. We tried fishing in the shallows and the little marina near the ramp, but all that we found were beavers; large, pissed off, tail-slapping beavers. We headed south from the ramp, intending to head right down to the south lake, but got distracted by a huge amount of bait on the fish finder: [img:b13632c1fd]https://imageshack.com/a/img923/9548/6JxHmF.jpg[/img:b13632c1fd] We tried drop-shotting the suspending school of bait. I threw a five inch white fluke and Ryan threw a four inch shad-pattern paddletail swimbait. We both felt taps on our lines, but didn’t get any bites. Were we throwing the wrong lures? Maybe, but this is what was in the school: [img:b13632c1fd]https://imageshack.com/a/img922/5655/QEFBNz.jpg[/img:b13632c1fd] That’s a gizzard shad and I think we matched it pretty well with our choice of lures. We finally headed down to the south lake. After we got past a couple of idiots who were blocking the culvert (bass tracker aka Greg and his son Jim), we hit the pads in the northeast corner. I threw a Bullfrog Zoom Horny Toad and Ryan threw a Lunkerhunt Prop Frog. After 20 minutes without even a swipe, I said, “I guess that throwing frogs wasn’t such a good idea.”, when, suddenly, I got a bite. I waited a couple of seconds before setting the hook on our first fish, which was a 2-3/4 pound largemouth bass. Whoo hoo! We continued clockwise along the shore, but caught nothing but rock bass until we hit the coves in the southeast corner. Although we had seen tons of beds with only sunnies on them, I finally spotted one with a largemouth bass on it about three feet down on a rocky shoreline hump. We were cruising along on the trolling motor, so we were moving at a good clip and I couldn’t get a cast on it. I yelled to Ryan to toss a Senko at it from the back of the boat as we drifted past. He grabbed a setup with a Texas-rigged Pit Boss soft plastic craw on it, instead, and dropped it into the bed. He never saw the fish, but almost immediately felt a thump and set the hook on our second keeper, which was another 2-3/4 pound largemouth. If anyone had told me we’d catch a bedding bass during the tourney, I would have said, “Not a chance!” In the cove, Ryan got very little action on his frog, but I got our third keeper, a little 13-inch largemouth, with a wacky Senko tossed at the edge of the pads. We fished around the shore of the south lake for a while, but caught only a short largemouth. We did spot a 2-1/2 pound male largemouth guarding a school of fry underneath a dock, but it ignored the Senko, Pit Boss, fluke and swimbait we tried to drag through the school. It wasn’t until after we headed back through the culvert to the middle lake that I caught a two-plus pound, milky-eyed, slow-moving zombie largemouth with a wacky Senko tossed at the rocks next to the culvert as we passed through it. I got to see the fish slowly rise up underneath the Senko in the cloudy water and gently suck it into its mouth. Our fourth keeper, Whoo hoo! We headed over to the marina on the southwest end of the middle lake and Ryan caught our fifth keeper with a wacky Senko tossed at the docks. The two-plus pound largemouth had a big belly and was the healthiest-looking fish we caught all day. We had a full bag, Whoo Hoo! We spent the rest of the tourney banging docks and any offshore cover we saw. I boated four or five short largemouth and our sixth keeper largemouth with a wacky Senko, but it was just 12-1/4 inches long and didn’t cull. We ended up in Third Place with a 10/6 bag. First Place had 12/11 with the four-pound tourney lunker, and basstracker and Jim took Second Place with 12/09. Here’s Ryan with our two best fish: [img:b13632c1fd]https://imageshack.com/a/img924/8532/p1PIsO.jpg[/img:b13632c1fd] I think we wasted too much of our time in the morning near the ramp. Apparently, we should have checked out the north lake, because that’s where the winning bag was caught, or we should have headed right down to the south lake, because that’s where the Second Place bag was caught. And both of those bags were caught before 10:30 am. Our next tourney will be in two weeks at Twin Lakes. Ryan will be out of the country, so I’ll be fishing, hopefully, with my buddy Sam, who owns my first boat and calls East Twin his home lake.
Author:
senecak
Date:
Jun 28, 2018
Message:
Hello Peco! Very nice report! I met you at the ramp... sort of. I was the guy with Triton 189TRX with the same color scheme as your boat. I’m new to this forum being a Mass guy, but I fish CT just as much if not more. I was out with my neighbor fun fishing. Not quite as long as you guys were out there but we landed a 10/4 bag with 3.7 being our largest. How do you like that Ultrex?
Author:
PECo
Date:
Jun 28, 2018
Message:
[quote:5f2945d291="senecak"]Hello Peco! Very nice report! I met you at the ramp... sort of. I was the guy with Triton 189TRX with the same color scheme as your boat. I’m new to this forum being a Mass guy, but I fish CT just as much if not more. I was out with my neighbor fun fishing. Not quite as long as you guys were out there but we landed a 10/4 bag with 3.7 being our largest. How do you like that Ultrex?[/quote:5f2945d291] Oh, you’re the guy with the pretty boat! You had a good day. We just never found a lunker. A 3-1/2 pounder would have won our tourney for us. I didn’t notice what kind of troller you have. For me, the 80 pound thrust Ultrex is the best trolling motor available. Foot-pedal control that operates and feels like cable-steer, AND Spot Lock?!?! You can’t beat THAT! Well, unless Minn Kota has come out with a saltwater-resistant Riptide version. You might have noticed that I’ve beaten the paint off of my torpedo in less than 1-1/2 years and the bare metal is starting to corrode. I need to get a polyurea coating on it, soon. Oh, and I think that Minn Kota skimped on grounding the motor. A buddy and I have both had problems with sonar interference on our Helix 10 G2 units. He fixed his with a simple ground wire to the torpedo after A LOT of back and forth with Humminbird customer service. I’m still living with the problem.
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