Date: 9/21/08

Since the season was winding down on Cedar Lake we decided to take the boat out of the water last weekend and make a trip to the sounds for some striper, bluefish, and porgy fishing before we dropped the boat off at the marina to be winterized. We launched out of the Baldwin Bridge launch in Old Saybrook aroun 5:30AM, but didn’t make it out into open water until 6:45AM since the fog was in thick and visibility was only about 5 feet!

At one point a 50 foot boat crossed in front of us about 10 feet off our bow and we barely saw it.  Thank god for GPS otherwise we would have never made it to the sound… As soon as the sun came up the fog burned off and we were able to open it up and head out to the eastern rip.  We three way’d eels on two rods and and fresh bunker chunks on one rod from 30-50 feet.  Almost immediately we hooked up with a nice bluefish that gave a pretty good fight and weighted about 12 lbs on the boga grips.

Here is a shot of my friend Robbie with his catch:

We had 2 or three more big hits on the eels, but nothing else was boated on the rip. The fresh bunker was left untouched the whole day. After an hour of drifting we moved to Long Sand Shoal to try our luck, but nothing was biting there either.

A short trip to Outer Hatchetts Reef and we were drifting live eels and bunker chuck with no success again.  At this point the tide went slack and we decided to switch into porgy mode catching 20-30 porgies and about the same number of small black sea bass using clams and squid. It was coming up on lunch time so we decided to tube and worm with t-man custom tackle tubes and sandworms up the shoreline back to the dock and dine, but never had a strike on those either. We ate lunch and headed back out to the eastern rip and tried our luck with our last couple eels.

We hooked up pretty quick when we got back to the rip, but it turned out to be a skate.

It was getting late and the sun, water, and fishing had beat us up all day, and we still needed to scrub down the boat and drop it off at the marina, so we headed back to the launch.

Overall we had a fun day, even though we didn’t have the best luck…

The next night we decided to try again and finally got everyone over for some skiing action… On the boat was Me, Kate, Erik, Jeff, Buddy, Robbie, and Jack. Out of everyone Erik was the only one to get up on the skis this day… Tubing is a different story, I could not be thrown, but everyone else took some good diggers.

Here are a couple shots from the day on the water:

Erik skiing:

Here is a shot of jeffs leg after hitting the water hard!

 Once we were done abusing ourselves tubing and skiing we decided to rig up the poles and go out for some late night catfish… We tried stink bait nuggets, hotdogs, and night crawlers, but the only thing we caught was a buzz… By 11:30pm we called it a night.

The fishing started off very slow, we only landed one fish in the first hour, but it picked up once we got to the grass mats along the northern shoreline, and we landed 6 or 7 bass.  We then moved into a shallow cove on the northeast tip of the lake, which yielded my mom a couple of largemouths off of grass mats.  Fishing the knocked down trees in the cove produced no fish, which was quite uncommon.  After that we decided to fish around the docks on the north shore, and I caught a 3lb largemouth on a texas rigged senko, but nothing else was noteworthy.

After minimal success on the docks, we moved back over the weed beds, I switched to a topwater banana boat, not expecting to catch anything since it was now noon time, and on my first cast I caught a 2lb largemouth. Thinking I was on to something I threw it for the next 10 minutes with no hits.  I looked through my bag and found some “Ribbit” frogs that I had bought on clearance and decided to give them a try over some weeds that had breached the surface.  The Ribbit frog rig is interesting, it comes with a bleeding red hook with a corkscrew on the top that goes into the head of the bait, and the hook goes in texas style with a slot on the back of the frog.  The action of the two legs on the back of the bait is pretty impressive as it swims across the top of the water.

I had never fished a frog on cedar lake because there are no lilly pads, but I figured since the fishing was slow I would give it a shot.  On my third cast, to my surprise I caught a 2lb largemouth.  I figured I might as well keep trying since I had a strong hit, and the fish got the hook on the first try…  2 casts later I had an explosive hit over the weed beds and the fight was on.

After a strong fight in heavy cover I got the fish to the boat.  I couldn’t tell how large it was until I went to lip it. I reached down, lipped the fish and brought it into the boat along with a pound of weeds. The result was a nice 4 to 4.5lb largemouth.

We stayed and fished that area for another 15 minutes with no luck before heading home.  In order to take advantage of the nice weather and my day off, I went home had lunch and then went out waterskiing with Erik and Randy.  We called it a day around 330P and I had to mow the lawn, be an electrician, and go grocery shopping.  Needless to say I was pretty tired around 9pm and fell asleep the second I hit the bed!

The weather was beautiful, despite the dreary start to the day, so we headed out to my favorite weed beds and after a quick tutorial on how to use a spinning reel we all started fishing senkos. I decided to throw three different colors: black and yellow swirl, june bug, and green and silver swirl. The junebug senko was wacky rigged with an octopus circle hook so Randy could have an easier time setting the hook since it was his first time. Erik and I threw texas rigged senkos. As it turned out, it didn’t matter what color or rigging method we used, the fish were hungry and were going to eat anything. What a difference a day can make.

On his first cast Erik was explaining to Randy how to work the bait, when he hooked a nice bass which came off right at the boat. Randy then caught his first fish, a nice 2-2.5lb largemouth. While getting his camera phone, the fish found its way back into the lake, so here is a picture of his second fish (much smaller).


Not big but still fun! (Click to enlarge)

In total we caught about 7 fish on our first drift (it was a little windy at that time so it was a quick drift). We did a second and third drift and caught another 5-10 fish. At this point the boat traffic really picked up and appearently we were right in the party boat lane since everyone and anyone on a boat wanted to get as close to us as possible and drive directly through the weeds we were fishing. We went to another set of grass mats and landed 6 or 7 more fish. Randy caught 3 in a row off of a dock, and started bragging, asking me how many I had caught. I switched to a topwater banana boat, and landed 3 fish in a row which shut him up. Unfortunately one fish was quite possibly the smallest bass I have ever caught, and definitely the smallest I ever caught on a 4 inch topwater lure:

After the hits stopped at location two we moved on to my third grassy location, and only caught 2 fish using my banana boat. After that we decided to go back to our original spot since the boat traffic seemed to die off. Erik and Randy continued throwing senkos, and I switched to a firetiger pop and chug. They landed another 5 or 6 fish and I caught another 4 or 5 on topwater, the biggest being around 2.5lbs as the last little bit of sunshine was fading behind the horizon.

We went in for the evening and played some wii fit, and rampage total destruction. It was a fun night with good company, good fishing and even better weather. Randy is definitely hooked, and will likely be buying his first rod and reel soon!

Conditions: Calm to Breezy, warm, dusk, water temp 77 degrees