Norwich Bulletin

Unless we get a real deep freeze, the coves and inlets along the Connecticut River will be melting off for open water fishermen who target yellow perch, calicos, bluegills and northern pike within the next two to three weeks.

The lower river spots, such as Hamburg Cove will usually melt open before the more northerly areas, such as Wethersfield or Keeney Coves. This time of year, yellow perch are getting ready to spawn, so they are building up into huge dense schools in the protected areas along the entire river (as well as in area lakes). Right after ice-out, especially when temperatures are mild and the sun has a chance to warm the water a tad, yellow perch will turn on where ever they can be located.

Another good option will be sea-run brown trout. The upper reaches of the Mystic River, Niantic River near the Golden Spur and the lower Hammonassett Rivers have all been producing some sea runs (top end two to four pounds) over the past few years. The most popular spot around here is the upper Niantic River where Latimer Brook and Oil Mill Brook, two state stocked sea-run spots converge.

Historically, Latimer Brook was the state's original sea-run brown trout experiment in the 1960s. The original stockies came from European egg sources from England and Denmark. These stockings created a unique fishery that generated a good deal of media attention in the angling world at that time. Unfortunately the program waned and was dropped by the early-'80s when the Atlantic salmon began to come back to the Connecticut River.

In 2001, the sea-run program was recreated under the then new Trout Management Plan, which now utilizes excess hatchery fingerling brown trout as the primary source for stocking. As a result, over the past few seasons, anglers have been successfully targeting and catching sea-run brown trout once again in most of the areas that produced them during the heyday fishing years of the late-1960s and early-1970s. Ron Meroy caught a 1 1/2 pound state record sea-run brown from the Saugatuck River during the warm spell in early January.

Fishing has generally been productive lately right up inside Norwich Harbor, especially when storm fronts are approaching with cloudy skies and dropping barometric pressure. I finally had a break in my schedule and managed to catch a fair number of fish (60-70 to about 24 inches) over the weekend.