Connecticut Fishing Report
Matt, at Black Hall Outfitters in Westbrook reported a strong tautog bite in 15 to 25 feet of water last weekend, unfortunately the CT season has ended. School to just over slot-class bass are around in better numbers, especially around the tidal creeks and herring runs. If you’re out there on a full sun day, with a decent surface temperature, you’re apt to find some fairly reliable topwater action. If they’re not biting topwater, you should be able to fool them on Fin-S fish or GT paddletails. The herring numbers seem to have increased quite a bit, find the ospreys and you should find the herring and bass. Anglers targeting shad in the mid to upper stretches of the CT River have reported much better action over the past few days as well. Matt hasn’t spent as much time in the sweetwater this week, but reports are good for big largemouth on swimbaits and jigs, while trout action is as steady as ever.
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Heather from the Blackhawk in Niantic reported that their season will start on Friday, May 3rd with scup season now open. They expect squid trips to be posted soon, as they know everyone is anxious to go. Stay tuned for those tickets, those trips tend to fill up quickly. New tickets for each week will be posted online on Monday night at 8 p.m., just like in past years. Be sure to check out their calendar so you see what’s coming up! They will also continue to book private charters, so be sure to email the office to get your date on the calendar.
Captain Mike Roy at Reel Cast Charters said that the fishing was pretty good this week. The striped bass are still willing to hit smaller soft plastics on jigheads, and each day they are starting to see more striped bass that are willing to hit topwater offerings. They are still targeting resident fish as they wait for some larger masses of fresh fish to show around the river mouths, which could happen any day now. Most of the fish are school sized to 30-inches with the occasional 15-pound class fish mixed in. Captain Mike and his team have openings over the next two weeks, which should be primetime Give him a call today to book your spot.
Captain Chris of Elser Guide Service told me that he has been splitting up the action this week between the Hendrickson hatch for trout and hitting the estuaries for stripers. While the trout fishing has remained consistent, it’s the striper fishing that is really starting to heat up. Chris has been doing well anywhere from Milford to Norwalk this week out front and up the estuaries. Norwalk and the points west are starting to give up a decent number of large migratory bass, and even a few bluefish to the west of Greenwich. Casting big topwaters like the Game On X-Walk has been producing in the early morning hours, while trolling or working flutter spoons has been a strong tactic when the fish are down deeper. All of this activity is moving east and by the end of next week all of the Western Sound from New Haven to Greenwich should be on fire. The bunker schools have been sporadic, but there’s enough around that you’ll usually run into one on most trips.
Rich, at Fisherman’s World in Norwalk reports another strong week of fishing locally and to the west. The local bass bite has been excellent, much like the one that occurred last year before the full wave of fresh fish filled in. The resident stripers are still hanging around in the harbors, bays and inshore around the islands and have been receptive to both bait and lures. The general size of those fish seemed to tick up this week as more 30-inch plus stripers were reported back from the customers they’d talked too. The larger bass are right on time, as they are present to the west and slowly making their way toward the region. More and more boats reported heading west from Greenwich and Execution Rock reported good fishing on the troll with mojo rigs and vertically jigging flutter spoons. The scup season opened May 1st and although it’s early in local areas, anglers heading to Oyster Bay and Eaton’s Neck should be chiming in with some strong reports soon. Much like last week there were a handful of reports from customers that fished the Saugatuck Reservoir reported it is fishing well for walleye and smallmouth.
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Connecticut Fishing Forecast
As we flip the calendar from April to May, we close the tautog season, but we open some others and get closer to late-spring, early-summer patterns of fishing. Scup season has opened, and fluke season is right around the corner, and while you’d likely have to travel to find decent action of either species right now, it signals that we are getting closer to summer fishing. Striped bass action can hold down the fort in the saltwater right now, with strong reports of quality bass chasing herring up the estuaries, along with some fresh schoolies around the river mouths. A large glut of bigger bass is starting to show up in the far Western Sound, and they are right on schedule, so we should be seeing some much larger specimens showing up in local reports momentarily. Another seasonably anticipated bite heated up this week and that was for American shad in the Connecticut and Farmington Rivers. The shad catches increased as the temperature climbed, and water levels fell, and that trend should continue this week. Trout action also benefitted from some better river flows, along with the recent Hendrickson hatch.
Migratory fish are already in the sound or a couple weeks. We caught a dozen fish between 30-38 inches two weeks ago, all of them had sea lice.