If true it's the best news I,ve heard to date. I wish it would include Lakeville.

a much better thing would be artificial lures only,especially on east twin.

Good point Joe on releasing trout in warm water . I catch and release many of my trout and leave them alone July thru mid September.

Wow you guys are fast!
As of right now we are only looking into the potential of instituting a summer closed season (July 1-Sept. 15)on East Twin, Highland and Crystal. Nothing is close to being finalized. We are proposing this regulation change for 2007 at the earliest. There are several goood reasons for this proposal. In a nutshell we have had the special regs on Trophy Trout Lakes on several of our best cold water lakes for over 10 years. We have seen some modest success in Highland but not much in Cyrstal. East Twin did great in the beginning (with a very strict closed season June 1 to 3rd. Sat in April of the next year). When the closed season was removed in 1998 we have seen a decline, though still an OK Trophy trout fishery until this past year. Our fall sample in East Twin this past year (2005) was horrible and we are not very optimistic about large trout in East Twin for this upcoming year. We have reasonably good creel data from all 3 locations that indicates, that a very small number of fishermen catch a incredible number of trout in these locations during the heat of the summer (when available coldwater habitat is most compressed and trout are most stressed from handling). As an example, several years ago myself and other fisheries personnel talked to 3 boats (4 anglers)on East Twin Lake who claimed to have caught a combined total of 4,500 trout, for the whole season, all out of East Twin Lake. Obviously the majority of those fish were released but the fact is that many trout are being caught and released repeatedly during the course of the summer. Even if hooking and handling mortality are fairly low for one capture event, they increase dramatically for multiple events. Add to this the fact that anglers can legally harvest 4 trout under the slot (in Highland and Crystal) for the whole year and you begin to see one reason why we might not have a large number of trout surviving into the slot length limit and even fewer coming out on the upper side. Our expectation is that the summer closed season will improve the fishing for holdover trout within a few years. The no-downriggers/leadcore is an attempt to reduce the anglers who might still go out after trout, during the heat of the summer, and claim that they are trolling for bass/perch/etc. Yes ,people can still "cheat" if they want to try and get away with something but at least it would make some of the more effective summer techniques very obvious. There will be public hearings scheduled on all of this and we encourage everyone to participate and express your support or reasons why you would be opposed. In all honesty, I know this is a very big sacrifice on many of you die-hard trout anglers, but I honestly believe it will improve fishing for hold-over brown trout, in these locations, for everyone.

Tim - Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Lakes and Ponds guide basically say even the lakes you mentioned have "potential" for holdovers. With the exception of perhaps a stable water level at Colebrook or Hogsback I don't think any CT lakes will hold over many trophy sized fish. If these regulations come to pass you can count on me possibly taking my license money out of state. Not all of us are bass fisherman.