Sudbury Resevoir Fishing Report

Larry The Sudbury Lunker Escapes His Weigh In

I told myself I was going to go fishing at the crack of dawn Saturday since I had decided to take the previous weekend off, but as I hit the sack around midnight without setting my alarm I figured I'd be fast asleep at dawn and the earliest I'd be hitting the water was no time before 8am.

So 4:45am, like clockwork, I'm wide awake and my body is telling me, "it's time to hit the water". Since it's already so late in the summer, sunrise isn't for another hour and it's pitch black, so I take my time making my way down to the reservoir, and end up walking through the woods in the dark to my favorite spot.

The water was dead calm and the skies were overcast. Temps were in the mid 60's but it was surprisingly uncomfortable since it was so humid. I started off the morning with my first cast at around 5:45am about 10 minutes before sunrise using my secondary setup, a 6' pole with the cheaper reel, working a topwater popper for a few minutes trying to stir up some action. I got a bite after about 5 minutes and pulled in a nice size 1lb 9oz LMB.

It's at this point I decide to switch over to my main setup, a 6'1/2" with the good reel, rigged with a 5" baby bass senko on a 3/0 off-set weightless hook. Now at this point the water is still dead calm, but there is commotion all over the place. In just about every direction you look the calm was broken up by a splash here, a ripple there, or a whole bunch of churning over in that area. I tossed the senko as far as I could about 30 yards to the left of where I caught my first fish to a spot where I'd seen some activity. I let it slowly sink to the bottom for about 10-20 seconds and as I picked up the slack to start working it back in...

Bam!!! Fish on!! I can feel it's a big one, but its not fighting nearly as hard as some others I've caught in the past, but as soon as it gets within about 20 feet of the shore and starts to really pull hard and jump a bit, I can tell this puppy is a MONSTER and the biggest fish of the year for me. I'm not going to lose this guy so I pull him in as quickly as I can while being careful to watch my pole and line for resistance.

I get him on the shore and start to unhook him only to find I'd hooked him deep in the gut and it ends up taking me probably a minute or two to get the hook out. No wonder he wasn't fighting so hard. As I'm working to get the hook out though I can't help but notice how HUGE this guys mouth is. Seriously, I've caught tons of LMB before, but never one that truly had a mouth THAT big. I'm a big guy and I could have easily fit my whole fist in there without touching the sides. Crazy. I'm thinking as I'm holding him he's easily 5lbs+ or more. I caught a 3lb 7oz last month in the same spot and that guy was a baby compared to this thing.

So... I lay him down next to my pole to take a quick pic. (Since I shore fish by myself you need the pole for contrast). I'm just about to weigh him and maybe take another pic, and bam!!! He wiggles free and escapes!!!!! I seriously jumped in the water after him. He was dazed so it took him a second to get going, but as I'm diving with both arms, knee deep, just trying to get my hands around him, he swam away.

Argh!!!! Larry the Sudbury Lunker escaped his weigh in!!!!

Not deterred, but annoyed with myself that I was so excited that I screwed up and didn't weigh him first, I went right back to fishing the same way as I caught Larry . Different assorted 5" green/watermellon/pumpkin fleck, etc... senko's on the 3/0.. Within 15 minutes I'd hooked two more fish, a 1lb and a 1lb 3oz, working the areas with the all commotion. It was almost like cheating. See area with activity, toss out senko, catch fish. See more activity, toss different senko, catch fish.

Then... right about 6:30am, it stopped. I tried working every bait in my tackle box for the next hour plus. Tried working some more poppers to stir up action, cranks, different colors, spinners... Nothing. And the worst part was you could see that any activity that was happening at this point, although it had died down, had moved about 10 yards beyond the furthest I could cast. :-)

Larry must have told them to stay away from me.

So that was my morning... Your guess is as good as mine as to his weight. I took a pic of the 1lb 3oz for contrast, and you go back to my 3lb 7oz from a few weeks ago in my other pics(he looks tiny compared to this guy), so I'm gonna conservatively say 5lb+, although he could have easily been more.... He's about 20" if you look at my pole, and you can see a package of senko's in my tackle box to get more contrast to his size, but man!!! He could have been closer to 6lbs, but I'll never know.

Oh well.. You're still out there my friend, and I'll be back. :-)

Till next time. ;-)

• Added By: taez555 on 08/20/11 08:12 AM
• Location: Sudbury Resevoir
• Report Date: 8/20/2011
• # of Hotspots: 1
• # of Photos: 3
• # of Fish Caught: 4
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