South Kent Fishing Report

South Spectacle Lake

Beautiful clean, calm day. Arrived at about 11:15am, temperature was about 75*, mostly sunny. Lake is about 125 acres in my estimation. Access to non motorized boats only was through a DEEP walkway only path right away off route 341 designated by a small DEEP sign and enough parking for two cars to pull off the road to park. Path to the lake was about a 350 yard walk through a warn out path. Kayak is really the only way to get a boat in but if you have a row boat and a strong friend, you can carry one in. Once to the water, it's another 50 yards or so with a very narrow water way about one foot deep, 3 feet wide. It's takes time and patience to finally reach the main body of water but well worth it.

The lake itself is the cleanest, clearest I've seen so far in the state! Visibility was easily over 10' and was probably more but the depth of the lake was typically 10' deep with a few spots 10'+ but there were no objects at the bottom to see true bottom at its deepest (meaning, there was very little weeds or vegetation in the lake). It was unbelievable how weed free it was. The edges did have some Lilly pads and some other reeds popping through but all in all, little vegetation. Very limited cover from fallen trees or stumps or rocks and no leaves from past season were seen in the lake at all. No place for baitfish or predatory fish to hide.

My intended target was Large Mouth Bass. Within the first 10 minutes, I landed a quick 2 lb bass near some Lilly pads using a green/white soft 5" stick bait. I fished using this lure all day until I ran out due to the fish tearing them apart and breaking many lines (more on that later). I moved from the lilies to a different cover along the shore that looked like tulip leaves. In doing so, I discovered a different species in the lake, the viscous chain pickerel. I caught about 5-7 of these fish in the size of 12"-18" in size. Some caught in the lip, some hooked through their back or top of the head. Not sure why this occurs but I can only guess they hit the lure so hard and try and turn away at the last moment only to get hooked unconventionally. With their large sharp teeth, I had no desire to grabbing the fish to dislodge the hook. I did NOT enjoy catching them nor was it my intention to catch them.

As I rounded the lake, I found that the pickerel where ambushing their prey from these tulip looking water vegetations and the bass from the Lilly pads. Needless to say, I sought out the Lilly pads. In doing so, my bass catching success increased with only a few pickerel from there. When I did hook up on pickerel in its mouth, many a time, their teeth broke my line and released the fish. I lost a lot of tackle that day. My rod was a 4 1/2' ultra light on 4lb test. My monofilament had no chance against the teeth of the pickerel.

There was a time that I saw bait fish surfacing in the middle of the lake so I tried my hand at catching what was forcing the bait fish to the surface. By this time I changed to a smaller 3" albino alewife soft lure stick bait. I was able to land one of these middle lake predator fish; it was a crappy. Once finding out what was in the middle, I pursued the LMB again along the shore.

There are signs of beavers in this lake but didn't see any.

All in all, this lake is flat out beautiful with just 7-10 residential homes along the shore (some of those multimillion dollar homes), comprising of 15% developed shoreline and 85% woodland and bordered swamp lands. This lake seems spring feed as the water temperature was on th cooler side this time of year at around 75* where most other bodies of water are a little over 80*. I loved fishing here and will fish there again but the inability to access the lake easily and the work it took to get in and out of the lake with a kayak and tackle will limit the amount of times I will fish there in the future.

Fishing activity was a 5 out of 10 and fish size was a 6.5 out of 10.

• Added By: geostang351 on 09/16/18 08:45 PM
• Location: South Kent
• Report Date: 9/15/2018
• # of Photos: 8
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