Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations My fishing buddy isn't allowed

I was planning on heading out east to Massachusetts to a little lake I fished as a kid as part of a vacation the wife and I are taking. The feds have made the lake and some surrounding ground a federal conservation area and have really gone overboard with the regs. It was bad enough they don't let you in until 10 A.M. and you have to be out by early evening, charge a fee, sometimes aren't open for no good reason, won't respond to my emails out of state(but I do know they respond to Massachusetts residents), etc. etc. but now they have a rule where dogs are not allowed. I dont' know about you guys but I have always looked forward to taking my dogs on fishing vacations and they all have loved riding in the boat. Now if i want to fish the lake I have to leave her home at a dog kennel.

I guess I had to gripe.

I hope this is not political. It's not meant to be.

A lot of parks have gone to that no-dog law.

Frankly, it might be the dog owners at fault who leave dog doo-doo around, or let poorly behaved dogs off their leashes.

That about sums it up! Ticks me off cause I follow the leash laws and pick my dog's poop up, but there are always people out there who don't wanna follow the rules. It screws it up for the rest of us!

I'm sure you're right but it's a shame as you say we have to suffer for the irresponsible people out there. The same goes with litter. I watched an angler once discard his entire wallmart plastic bag, lure wrappers etc. on the bank when there was a garbage can on the ground 10 feet away. You have to wonder what their houses look like.

Sadly, some or their houses look spot clean. After all, it's THEIR house... Others, well they are hogs no matter where they are!

Just frustrates me that we have to loose our freedoms because OTHER people are irresponsible.

Why did they turn your favorite childhood lake into such a high restriction area? Some endangered species or rare ecosystem involved?

Yeah it has some kind of rare bog around it and it's kind of a mini Walden Pond (virtually identical but smaller.) No development on it whatsoever except for a swimming beach and electric motors only which I really like. It used to be part of an Army base that is closed now so it went from one federal agency to another. The locals hardly fish it anymore because they are ticked they have to pay to fish a lake their tax money pays for.

I can't stand litter. If I am with a friend or friends and they throw something on the ground I go pick it up and put it in their truck or quad or whatever. They usually give you a funny look but I don't care. Imagine if everybody did that(litter). People ice fishing I notice are the worst.

Sounds like a gorgeous place! Unfortunately, as we have already said the only way to protect such unique places is through crazy restrictions. What species are found in the lake?

It's planted with brook, brown, rainbow, and tiger trout (high water quality and holdover and although only 30 acres it's 60 feet deep with steep dropoffs. Also largemouth bass, bluegill, and yellow perch. Water clarity is probably 20 feet. I fished it every day as a kid and can still catch any species of fish in it any time of year I know it so well. Not shown in this picture but some of the hills around it go up quickly at least 100 feet I think. It's a glacial kettle lake and on a colonial map I saw the name as Big Hell Pond. The military renamed it Mirror Lake.

Name the week, I'll be your fishing buddy! HAHA Sounds like a cool little lake to fish. I like lakes that are two story fisheries like that.

I wouldn't mind although there is nothing like the solitude of a quiet little lake with no outboards, jetskies, cottages, or power boats flying around. I think that is what's so great about our ponds?

What's interesting about this lake and many in this region is they have large bluegills (one over 11 inches from this little lake see pic below) and most the locals consider them trash fish. I've caught as many as 200 good size bluegills in a couple of hours and they are so unpressured they will hit the split shot on your line. I've had them come up to smack a popper on a fly rod off a bed in eight feet of water so hard they swallow the darn thing. When I lived there it was nothing to have these bull gills hit bass plugs.

A funny story is I was launching my boat on this little lake a few years ago and met two local guys fishing on the bottom for rainbows next to the launch. We got to talking and I told them I was catching and releasing brown trout with my downrigger and rubber band release to the point they were a nuisance as the size was not as big as I hoped. They were in disbelieve as all they were getting were rainbows on the bottom. I explained to them the browns were suspended and for some reason the rainbows fed on the bottom.

A day or two later I was back and took one of them out in the boat and sure enough he was tickled pink we were catching and releasing all browns. The guy went home and pulled his boat out of the weeds next to the garage where it went when he got married several years ago. As a master carpenter he went to town refurbishing it complete with carpeted floor etc. I sent him a downrigger I had in the garage and probably much to the chagrin of his wife he was fishing much more frequently now and catching more fish. I also instructed him on the use of a slip bobber.

Anyway, one day he's out there with a friend and releases a couple of dozen trout. He's perfected what I told him using a sewn on minnow behind a dodger and he's nailing trout left and right while the locals are still stuck fishing on the bottom. Two guys are fishing on the shore for rainbows where he used to fish and getting nothing and one yells out, "What are you usin'?" Greg who is kind of secretive about his methods yells back, " A little of this and a little of that." This really irks the guy and he responds with an, f you buddy!" LOL But it gets better. The guy on the shore is sure Greg is keeping all the fish over his limit so he calls the local C.O. When Greg comes in the C.O. is waiting on him and wants to search the coolers and his boat. Of course Greg has no fish and the C.O. leaves. The jealous guy that called it in is standing in the background fuming. LOL

One day I got a call from Greg and he said he caught a big brown with the slip bobber rig. Said he didn't know what depth to set it at so he set it at the depth I fish here in Indiana for rainbows, which is about 25 feet. He said his float went down and the fight was on. Said the fish kept pulling out drag and kept going and going like the energizer bunny. He was thinking, "Dear God just let me see it." He finally landed it much to his delight and it was a 6 lb. brown. The trout usually average only 12 to 16 inches in the lake so that was a big one.




Here's Greg with his big brown:

Isnt this why alot of us built our own ponds to begin with?

Absolutely!

Right on Tom, I enjoy the hundreds of lakes we have around here, but there's nothing like the solitude of your own pond, and nobody around to screw it up.

That's a nice BG and brown trout!