Posts Tagged flipping
Crooked Creek Lake
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Fishery of the Month on March 4, 2010
Nice Crooked Creek Lake Largemouth Bass
If you enjoy fishing a lake with a lot of weeds then this is not the lake for you. Weeds are difficult to find in the lake. There is however a ton of lake downs and bushes throughout the lake. It is not unusual to find debris build up at certain points of the lake when the area experiences heavy rains or snow melt off. Depth of the lake varies greatly from end to end. When you come out of the boat launch and head toward the dam (left) you will find deeper water ranging from steep banks and 30-foot depths to shelved banks that drop to that depth at a slightly slower rate. 
You can often find brush piles and fish habitats throughout this end of the lake. Some lay downs will be locate at this end of the lake and will be loaded with bass and crappie. If you head up the creek from the boat launch (to the right) you will find an abundant amount of lay downs, bushes, and debris jambs. This is a much shallow end of the lake and should be navigated very carefully. The water in the creek is usually muddy because the bottom is comprised most of slit run off from the creek. The dam end of the lake is usually clear or slightly stained in part because of the rocky bottom.
There are several species of fish that are abundant in Crooked Creek Lake. Let’s start by talking about my favorite fish, the largemouth bass. I swear that this lake was built for fishermen like myself who love to flip and pitch heavy cover. Needless to say, that I usually come out of the launch and head to the right towards the creek. This is one body of water that you do not need a gas motor to get to a good spot. Usually, I don’t even fire my gas motor until it is time to go home for the day. There is plenty of cover to flip and pitch all day long by heading up the creek.
Beaver style baits have become very popular among bass fishermen.
While fishing for bass on Crooked Creek Lake, I have been able to catch a lot of good-sized crappie. There are plenty of areas to fish for crappie, but the larger schools of these fish tend to be in the 8-15 foot depth range. While fishing the main body of the lake I watch a couple of boats fishing slip bobber minnow rigs for crappie catch so many crappie that I changed my target species for the day. After the day was over I talked to them about their day as they took pictures of a stringer of 12” crappies. The group of guys told me that there was no reason to keep crappie under the 12” size because they are so abundant.
Some other features of this park include a swimming area, campground, picnic areas, spillway, hiking trails, and a horse park. There is a $4 per vehicle charge for use of the park. This includes the use of one or multiple features of the park in the same day. There are 6 pavilions for picnicking and can be reserved through the office. There is plenty of wildlife throughout the park and can be enjoyed while hiking the trails or just sitting in the fields. Campground information and reservations can be made by visiting the Army Corp or Engineer website. If you are looking for a great family location to relax and enjoy the outdoors, remember Crooked Creek Lake is right down the road.
Canandaigua Lake
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on September 15, 2009
This past weekend I participated in the fourth divisional event for the bassmaster weekend series, New York West Division. As I have stated before these tournaments are the best run tournaments that I have ever
taken part in. Canandaigua Lake was the fishery where the tournament was being held. I have truly fallen in love with the finger lakes because of the beauty and how healthy the fish are.
I arrived at Canandaigua Lake around 8:00 AM Thursday morning. Since I have never been to the lake I decided to take a drive around and get a feel for the lake. This is what I discovered. The lake had shallow flats infront of the docks which did or didn’t have weeds. In this finger lake the weeds were more sparse and hard to find. I also found that some of the docks were in 20-30 feet of water. That condition I had yet to find in New York. But like seneca lake once you got into the 20 to 30 feet range then the water dropped off to 100 feet. The lake is about 16 miles long with a creek in the South end of the lake.
Now lets get to some fishing talk. Thursday I devoted my first 6 hours to looking for smallmouth bass. Talked to some of the locals they told me that it was going to take 18lbs to win this tournament and that it would be smallies. I was drop shotting, dragging tubes and beavers, and powerfishing. I even gave jerkbaits a decent amount of time. I had no luck for bass, but the rock bass and perch were all over my drop shot rig in about 25 feet of water. Around 2:00 Thursday I decided that I was going to find some back up
largemouth bass. I went to the first set of docks that had weeds on them and started flipping. It didn’t take long and I had caught 2 keepers and stopped sticking fish on this stretch. I started heading back up the lake trying points and good looking docks. Still convinced that smallmouth bass would win this event I spent most of my time trying to find them. I did hit a set of docks that looked perfect and my first flip I caught a 3lb largemouth. I spent some time throwing a homemade chatterbait in the weeds and all I managed to get were pickerel. They are a very pretty fish. The last bass I caught for the day was my lunker. I found 1 laydown on the lake that had good water under it and I flipped in and bam. 4+lb largemouth. I stopped fishing around 6:00 PM Thursday night. After that day I realized that I could get a limit of largemouth that was decent, but not going to win the tournament.
Friday, Jon and I head to the lake early to see if we could get an early bite. I had a couple points that I had marked to try and we ran right to the first one. 10 minutes into the day I caught a 2lb largemouth on a popper. Off of that point was a nice weed line and we worked it down shore about a 1/4 mile to the next point. Jon had a nice smallmouth bass follow his swimbait to the boat twice but couldn’t get it to commit. We decided to keep looking for smallmouth. After alot of looking around we came back to the point where Jon had the smallmouth follow his lure in. The sun had came out at this point and all of the sudden there were smallmouth everywhere and they were big. We fished for these 4 and 5 pound fish for about 1 hour and the only bite I managed to get was a 2lb smallmouth. After that bit of frustration I decided I need to find more largemouth spots. Around 4:00 PM we called it quits for the night and went to eat and charge the batteries.
Now it is tournament day and we arrived at the launch at 5:30. The tournament was set to launch at 6:30 so we had plenty of time. Or I thought I did. I started pulling rods out and testing the equipment. I quickly realized that my front light wasn’t working. After messing with it until 6:10 I gave up. I couldn’t find anything wrong with the wiring and couldn’t get it apart to check the bulb. The next crisis was that my rider for the day didn’t get there until 6:15 and was getting a traffic violation. It doesn’t stop there. Because the light didn’t work we had to wait until 6:47 when safe light happens to leave the canal. We were the last one to leave and we were boat 12. If you think that is the end of my bad luck you are sadly mistaken. When I was finally able to run I went to pull my trolling motor up and I a couple strainds of my rope broke. I was lucky though and it made it through the day. Finally, we got to go fishing, but running full speed is out of the question because there is a 45 mph speed limit on the lake.
The first spot I wanted to start at was where I say all of the smallmouth. There were 5 boats sitting on that point so I decided to run to a largemouth spot. I didn’t catch a bass until 9:00 AM. It was worth the weight though. A nice 3lber. 5 minutes later I put a 2lber in the livewell. We decided to go try the smallmouth spot, but once again there were 5 guys there. I then ran to another set of docks and caught a 14″ and 12 1/2″ keeper. Not big ones but I was glad to have them. Then the bad luck hit again. A nice 2lber hit in a dock and I ripped his lips off, and left him in the dock. I tried a couple other spots and decide at 1:15 to try to get some smallies. No luck because my head took me to the docks in from them. I am glad it did because my first flip I caught a 4 lb largemouth. Now I have my limit and decided to fly through the docks until the tournament was over. I lost 2 more fish that would have called my 12 1/2 by at least 1 lb. I finished the tournament with 5 bass that weighed 11.65lbs. It was good enough to finish 8th place.
Currently I am sitting in 4th place in the standings and the last tournament is the divisional championship at Oneida Lake. I will be looking to hold that spot, so that I can head to the Potomac River for the regional qualifier.
TBF District 6 – Pymatuning
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on June 1, 2009
This Saturday I had a great day of practice fishing with a young friend, Nick Black. Nick is 9 years old and absolutely loves to go fishing and hunting. His family has a camp at Pymatuning so since I was heading up to practice anyways I told him that he was welcome to come with me. I had no idea we would have such a great day. He was able to catch 10 bass, smallmouth and largemouth, and they varied from 14-17 inches long. Needless to say he was very excited.
With a great practice day behind me and a cold front arriving I prepared for a tough day on the water on Sunday. I was fishing in my first TBF District 6 event ever on Sunday. I was fortunate enough to draw a great partner and president of the Pennsylvania TBF Mike Pierro. Mike was more than willing to fish however I wanted to, and it was very obvious that he was a skilled fishermen from the word go.
Throughout the day we struggle to get good bites, but i managed to get a limit of 5 bass that weighed 9.21 pounds. It wasn’t what I would call a stellar day on the water but at least I had a limit. Little did I know that it would be good enough to finish in 3rd place. Needless to say I was quite pleased and I am looking forward to fishing the rest of the District 6 events.
For all of the competitive anglers out there who have yet to fish a federation tournament, I urge you to join a club that allows you to do so. These are good guys that just love to fish and compete.
Saturday at Lake Wilhelm
Posted by Jon Parker in Parker's Fishing Blog on May 25, 2009
My buddy and I took our first trip of the year to Lake Wilhelm on Saturday. The fishing was slow for most of the day, but by evening it started to picked up. It was difficult to find a pattern to fish. Some came out of laydowns, flipping jigs and Texas rigged creatures. We found that green pumpkin was the best color. Others came off deeper water structure, e.g. brush piles, road beds and creek channels, working jigs or c-rigs. Yet others came working a hartreuse and white buzzbait over shallow weeds. We also had a few that came throwing a senko in the bushes. We didn’t get anything that was really big, but we were able to get a good number of two to three pounders.
Pymatuning Open Tournaments
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on April 27, 2009
This weekend I spent fishing Pymatuning Lake in a couple of team bass open tournaments. My dad and I went up friday evening and found a spot with some really nice largemouth bass and had a lot of confidence going into Saturday’s tournament. The tournament saturday started with my trolling motor fuse melting and we lost about 15 minutes getting the trolling motor to work. Usually a bad start, but once we started fishing we caught fish instantly. Although we started catching fish they were not the right size fish. Most of our fish ranged from 12 to 14 inches long. We were about to get a couple nice 2 1/2 lbers though. Dad also caught a 45 inch muskie on a 3″ tube. That was one heck of a fight and as we got it by the boat we watch a guy trolling catch another muskie. The muskie are very active right now down by the dam.
Sunday was much of the same for us. we caught a bunch of bass, but we were unable to get good bites. We had tried multiple depths and multiple types of structures with the same results every time. My best fish of the day came when i flipped into a tree at what I had thought was a bass body. It turned out to by a 24 inch carp that destroyed my craw bait. It was not quite what I had in mind.
Even though we didn’t have a great tournament weekend we still had a great weekend on the water together. For May the weather was unbelievable and the water temperature was relatively warm. I should know I ended up falling in the lake during my carp catching incident. That sure gave us a good laugh and I didn’t get hurt.
Trouble Flipping?
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Tip of the Week on April 21, 2009
Are you having trouble getting your bait into the bushes without hanging up on branches. The first improvement you can make is to peg your weight. When flipping or pitching a texas rig you should always peg your weight. This will improve your accuracy and will allow the lure to bust through those hard to reach places. Certain weight companies have their own pegging system, but all you need is a tooth pick and any type of weight. The following is how I like to peg my weight. First I slide my weight on the line and tie my wide gap or worm work to the line (Fig 1). Next, take a tooth pick and push it as far into the weight as you can (Fig 2). Next, break the tip of the thooth pick off inside the weight (Fig 3) The weight is now pegged in place and you’re ready to pitch it into some brush (Fig 4).
Good Weekend of Bass Fishing
Posted by Leo Cancilla in Cancilla's Fishing Blog on April 20, 2009
Although it was the opening weekend of trout fishing, I decided to head out bass fishing at a couple of my favorite locations. With great weather on both days we had really high expectations.
Saturday we decided that Presque Isle Bay would be a great place to go fish for largemouth bass . The morning bite was the best part of the day. We caught 13 bass in the first couple of hours, but only 12 more the rest of the day. All of us were having trouble with short strike, but the only way we could get hit was slow rolling spinnerbaits, crankbaits, and swimming jigs. The size of the bass which we caught was smaller than expected, but I feel that over half of them were 15 inches or better. My dad also caught a Northern Pike that was around 36 inches long. The water temperature varied from 48 degrees to 53 degree in a couple small pockets.
Sunday Jon and I headed up to fish Pymatuning Lake because each of us have upcoming tournaments there. The two of us got off to a good start in the morning working the weeds and some small brush on the bank, but our day turned around 11:00. We stopped catching fish all together for a couple of hours. Then we shifted to the other end of the lake to test a couple more patterns and really found some nice fish on wood. It was hard to find wood that was in the right depth of water so that was more of the challenge than catching the fish. In the afternoon we caught a bunch of 2-3 pound fish. The water temperature varied from 52-61 degrees and the water clarity varied as well.
Overall it was a great weekend of fishing with guys I love to fish with. I don’t really know what could be better than that.
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