South Branch - Hunts Mills Park Area

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I am meeting a buddy on Sunday for a morning on the South Branch looking to target smallies and was trying to decide what stretch to check out. We had good luck a couple weeks ago at Duke Island Park (at least my buddy did, he caught a 3.4 lb smallie which he had to pull in by hand after the thing snapped his 10 lb mono). I was thinking about starting at Hunts Mills Park just south of 78 and working my way downstream maybe as far has the Hamden road bridge. Anyone have experience in this stretch of river? I have heard that the pond-like stretch below Hunts Mills Park (behind the Clinton Walmart) also holds some nice largemouth, has anyone had luck with LMB in this area? I would love nothing more than to snag a nice smallie and a nice LMB in one trip. Not looking for honey holes, just general feedback on this portion of the river. If anyone else plans to be fishing that area Sunday morning shoot me a PM.

The attached pic is the smallie caught by friend near Duke Island (note - my stupid scale is stuck in metric/kg so 1.55kg = 3.4 lb)