Danbury Time 624

• If you’re of a mind to get in on the June marabou bite action, plan on spending some time on the water this week and next.
• I’m not really sure why we still call this the “marabou” bite, as jigs tied with some type of hair (usually artificial polar bear hair or “craft hair”) have all but replaced marabou as the material of choice for these alewife imitators.
• Most area tackle shops have an assortment of jigs that ranges from plain white marabou or craft hair to custom tied alewife imitators that really strive to match nature. All of them will catch trout when the fish are bunched up in the deep holes as they appear to be right now.
• All it took to get the much anticipated June-marabou bite going was water temperatures getting into and staying in the 70s. Typically, trout anglers think of colder water as better for trout fishing, but there are any number of conditions that can contribute to good fishing for any species. In the case of Candlewood’s brown trout, the arrival of summer water temperatures almost always triggers a period of good catches.
• Ironically, part of the reason trout fishing there is so good at this time of year, is that Candlewood is not classic trout water. If you go by the book, Connecticut’s largest lake is too warm and too low in dissolved oxygen to support a quality trout fishery.
  Yet, due largely to its alewife forage base, the lake grows big browns, and plenty of them. That’s where the little white jig — tied of artificial or real polar bear hair or of marabou feathers — comes in. It seems to imitate an alewife in the eye of a brown trout a lot better than many seemingly more realistic lures do. But casting a tiny white jig into Candlewood’s 5400 acres in hopes that a trout sees it is kind of a needle in a haystack proposition. At least it would be if the fish were scattered randomly.
• When the surface water quickly warms past the trout’s comfort and tolerance level as it does somewhere around the end of spring each year, the biggest trout head for deeper, cooler, water. But much of the deepest water in Candlewood doesn’t hold enough dissolved oxygen to support the trout. Certain relatively small areas do though, and the biggest and baddest browns in the lake take possession of those areas. There’s a lot more fish than cold, oxygenated water though, and the competition gets fierce. When food (or your jig) wanders into a patch of water crowded with big, hungry brown trout, nature takes its course.
• Most of the best areas to find the aggregation of trout that this pattern depends on, are found fairly close to steep, rocky, bluff-like shorelines on the western side of the various arms of the lake. If you can sit in 35-feet of water and be an easy cast from a boulder strewn bank, odds are, you’re in a pretty decent area. If there’s a stream of brook coming in nearby, that’s another plus. But position your boat near that rocky bank, and cast your jig out into the deep water. When it hits bottom (evidenced by the line going slack) start a herky-jerky retrieve.
• As important as the right jig, is a good pair of polarized sun glasses that allow you to see through the surface glare, and into the fish’s world. Watch for the jig to come up out of the depths as you retrieve, because often the trout will be following it, and can be “teased” into biting it with a little creative rod tip jiggling. Sometimes though, catching one when there’s four or five chasing the jig can be tough.
• Sometimes it’s a matter of the aquatic version of buck fever. Seeing a bunch of trout following your lure — they might only be two and three pounders, but they always seem much bigger in the water — does things to your concentration and your reflexes. Sometimes, it’s a matter of them getting boat shy, and turning away as your boat comes into their field of vision. After a while though, it becomes easy to guesstimate when the jig is about to come into view, and to give it a couple second long pause at the appropriate moment, to trigger a reaction from a following fish before they come into view.
• The days of limits of 8 to 10 pound trout loading up on this pattern in Candlewood are likely history. In recent years, there’s been a few in that size range, but not many. And last summer’s long heat spell resulted in a lot of overcrowding in the limited cool, oxygenated waters, and that took a toll on the biggest fish, so there’s fewer yet. But there appear to still be plenty of 2- to 4-pound browns available, and even at that size, when you watch your jig disappear into one’s mouth just a few feet from the boat, the adrenaline definitely starts pumping.
• [Rich Zaleski, 6/25/060