Danbury Times, 6/18/06

1. Striped bass remain the main attraction in coastal waters for now, with big fish dominating the action on the major reefs and rip areas out in the Sound.
2. Schoolies are abundant and willing in the larger tidal rivers. Prime spots for the big girls include the reefs and rock piles off Watch Hill and the Race, as well as the Norwalk Islands and the Cows off Stamford. Live lining hickory shad and drifting eels the tactics providing the best shot at a real cow, but there have been a number taken on artificials — primarily large plastics like the 9” Slug-Go — as well.
3. School striper spots include much of the Connecticut River (best fishing at the moment is toward the mouth), New Haven, Milford and Norwalk harbors and the Housatonic River at spots ranging from the Devon power plant to the Derby Dam. Smaller soft plastics and surface plugs are working great when the schoolies are chasing baitfish on or near the surface, while trolled “tube and worm” rigs are the bread and butter presentation when the fish aren’t making their presence so easily known.
4. Blues are around too, but with the attention being devoted to stripers, the blues are more a nuisance for most anglers at this time than a target. If you’re of a mind to chase them, the list of laces to go for larger bass includes most of the best bluefish spots as well. To make your offering more species specific for the blues, try using more flash. Shiny Hopkins Spoons and the like will usually catch more blues than bass, although there are plenty of times that it seems they’ll slash their teeth through most anything you throw for stripers, shiny or not.
5. There are still bass on the beds here and there, but for the most part, largemouth fishing has moved into the heaviest grass, and smallies are beginning to move off shore. Early morning surface fishing off the ends of long points and submerged humps in Candlewood and Squantz should be a great way to target smallmouth for the next couple of weeks, while a Texas rigged creature bait flipped into the thickest vegetation should be prime for their largemouth cousins.
6. We haven’t heard anything of the start yet of a an early summer trout bite with jigs (Candlewood’s notorious “June Moon Marabou bite”), and that may be because the water turned suddenly cooler a couple weeks back, after reaching the low 70s, which usually triggers that bite to start. Or it might be that the anglers who’ve found them biting are keeping the news to themselves as long as possible. Either way, with the weather that’s predicted for this weekend, that bite should turn on now, if it’s ever going to.
7. Squantz Pond’s walleye have apparently moved into summertime patterns already, which means that night and very early morning fishing with live alewives fished close to bottom is the way to catch them. The problem is finding the right depth. Some nights they seem anxious to feed as shallow as possible, other nights you’ve got to move out to 15 to 20 feet of water to make contact. [Danbury Times, Rich Zaleski]