Revenge on Lake Carnegie
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008
Two days ago I made a trip to Lake Carnegie. There were heavy winds as a front was moving through so I added a bullet weight to my Texas rigged lizard. Worked the lily pads and enticed a fish to bite. Didn’t hook him the first time. My second try was a success but…as I yanked it through the lily pads my line broke! Darn. I had just set up a rod with 8 lb mono. Apparently, thats not strong enough for pulling fish out from heavy cover. Fast forward 48 hours. This time I brought my medium-heavy action rod with 15 lb mono. Took a long time to get any bites but then I noticed my line moving away. First try was a miss. Tossed the bait back to the same spot. This time I opened the bail on my reel and let the fish take off with it. One good hook set and I pulled in a nice 14 inch bass. This was a bruiser of a bass! Stocky body with some heft to it. I noticed the last couple of times out that I’ve found fish next to downed timber mixed with lily pads. Both bites came as the bait drifted next to a large log in the the middle of the lily pads in about 1 foot of water. Definitely the type of situation for heavier line. Anyways, I’m glad I was able to avenge my previous lost fish by make a simple tackle adjustment.
I’ve heard there are some big bass in Lake Carnegie. Its a pretty decent sized lake at 237 acres. I would love to take the canoe out on this lake since there’s plenty to explore. But today, I was a bankie. Got a lot of bites near the dam but nothing hooked. Possibly bluegill or crappie pecking at my plastic shad. Walked some more of the trail and found a nice opening in the brush to cast to lily pads. I felt a bite and then set the hook but the bait pulled right out. Tried it a couple more times and same thing. I decided to expose more hook on the plastic shad and then this time I let the fish take off with it and then gave it a good hook set. Pulled it through the lily pads and found myself a 12 inch bass. What is it with me and 12″ bass!?!? Can’t I get a 4 pounder one of these days?!?! I figured that fishing a bigger lake would do the trick but if I’m only going to catch 1 pounders I might as well fish my neighborhood pond. Anyways, I’ve found a pretty good resource for New Jersey lakes and ponds. Here’s a 
This past weekend was spent in the lovely town of Williamsburg, VA. While in town, I just had to check out some local fishing. Luckily, we stayed with friends on the banks of Lake Ajacan. Its a small lake and mostly surrounded by private property. This lake is full of largemouth bass. H caught one in the morning as we had a quick 15 minute fishing session before running some errands. That set the tone for the rest of the day. When we got back in the afternoon, we set up shop on the banks of one of the coves. Working both a plastic lizard and plastic worm, I caught a total of 8 largemouth bass within 2 hours. Average length was 12 inches with the longest being 13 inches and the smallest about 9 inches. But here’s the fish story of the day. While working the plastic worm I had a bite and set the hook. All of a sudden, the line started shooting out of the reel as the fish took off! Now I normally have the drag set kind of tight so whatever it was it was huge. I tried lifting the rod tip high but couldn’t manage to get the rod higher than ten o’clock or so. There was a small circular platform about 3 feet wide in the cove which was a fountain. I saw it rock back and forth with the surface of the water churning around. After battling the fish for several seconds, it broke my line. My adrenaline was on high octane at this point as I tried to figure out what had just happened.
This is what I could gather… My equipment: 6′6″ medium action Uglystick spinning rod, spinning reel with 8 lb test fireline, texas rigged curly tail purple worm. All the bass I had caught were in the 12″ range. Now there could certainly be a lunker bass in that lake. But how big can I expect a lunker bass to be? 6 lb? 10 lb? Would I be able to handle a 10 lb bass with a medium action rod with 8 lb test fireline? Perhaps. But my hypothesis is that I must have hooked one of the lake’s gigantic carp. According to our Williamsburg friends, that lake has some gargantuan sized carp. Carp are omnivorous and I imagine that a large one might go after a plastic worm. After being hooked, it must have taken off towards the deeper water. Since the fountain has a pipe underneath, it must have gotten wrapped on it as I saw the fountain shake side to side. And of course the 8 lb test is no match for a raging ginormous carp so it broke free. Unfortunately, I have no pics of the fish so I can’t be 100% sure that my hypothesis is true. But what I do know now is that I am curious about the excitement of carp fishing. I’ll have to invest in some heavier tackle so if anybody out there has a favorite setup for large carp please let me know!
Grovers Mill. The place where the martians supposedly landed. The pond was truly a mystery to me. When I was growing up around here in the 1980s, the pond was dried up. Then, either the engineers re-flooded it or water levels came back. Either way, I had remembered it being more of a duck weed infested swamp than a pond. Apparently, its now thriving place for recreation. The park on the banks is a place for kids to play and people were kayaking in the pond. There’s all kinds of wildlife around from geese to bullfrogs to turtles. As for fishing, there’s tons of cover for bass. Just like some of the other ponds in the area, Grovers Mill has a lot of lily pads along the shore. Using my trusty plastic lizard, I was able to bring in two bass from out of the lily pads. Both around 13 inches. There was a lot of top water activity all around the pond so I tried a Heddon Torpedo but didn’t get any strikes. I’ll probably focus on the soft plastics some more on this pond since you can see the lily pads move as the fish were cruising underneath so you know they are there. All you need to do is get your bait into the thick cover where they are. Check out the videos of the fishing action.