Local Fish Authority: Candlewood Bait and Tackle

For the amateur, bait is a tough choice. “Maybe I’ll use what looks the best,” the amateur thinks to his or herself. That’s a good approach if you’re fishing for yourself, but you want to catch bass for the fight or trout for dinner.

If you live in the Candlewood area, off Tamarack Avenue in Danbury there’s a shopping center where you’ll find Candlewood Bait and Tackle. It’s a great bait shop with reels, rods, live bait, fake bait, lures, line, weights, hooks—all sorts of tackle. They even carry tackle boxes and these guys know their stuff.

Mike, who works at the shop, is the professional you want to talk to. “We have it all,” Mike said. “Alewives, shinners, night crawlers, trout worms, dillies—and that’s just live bait.” Mike informs that if you’re using live bait you’re going to want to use it on the lake.

“Well which works best, Mike?”

“It depends what you’re fishing for,” he said. “If you’re on the lake for bass shinners work great, but that’s just for live bait.”

You’ve got two choices when it comes to bait, live bait and artificial (fake) bait. In Candlewood Bait and Tackle there is a whole rack dedicated to the fake bait. It comes in green, pink, purple, and red, black, white—all sorts of colors and they all look differently because they all work differently.

“On the lake and fishing to catch bass I recommend swimbait,” said Mike. Swimbait comes in hard body or soft body and Mike says to go with soft body. With the soft body swimbait, all you do it jig the little plastic-mesh fish onto your hook and cast out. The fish see it as a smaller fish, it smells and moves just like one when they’re looking at it. They have thin tails on the end so when you’re reeling through the water the soft body swimbait looks like a fish that’s swimming.

“As for trout, say you’re on the Housatonic River, we’ve got in-line spinners and kastmasters,” Mike informed. In-line spinners are lure set-ups that have a reflective, rotating piece of metal on the top, a small plastic body connected to a hook (usually a treble hook) and what’s called a classic rooster-tail around the hook. The rooster-tail is a skirt of sorts that drapes over the hook. In-line spinners are meant to reflect light through the water and attract fish like trout. “If you’re fishing in the Housatonic you want to use something quick and easy because those trout are fast.”

Candlewood Bait and Tackle is open 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday from 5:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Stop by if you’re planning a trip, talk to these guys, and you’ll catch exactly what they set you up to catch. Take it from Mike, “We’ve been fishing this lake since we’ve been kids.”