Lake Champlain 4/30-5/1

[Lard Almighty]

This trip did not start out very well. My brother and I met our guide Roger at the boat launch on Champlain at 7:00 Saturday morning, only to see the water about 5' high with 4' whitecaps on the main lake! Water was muddy and the wind was honking! Decided that Champlain was unfishable, so we made the quick drive to Lake George. The water was choppy, but not too bad, and it was crystal clear; made RV look like a mudhole. We fished several spots over the next five hours, but only managed one 14" smallmouth and a couple of bumps. Fish were lethargic with the cold front moving through. Decided to call it a day a little early as nothing was going on. Day 1: bust.

On Sunday, Roger was determined to get us out on Champlain, which was still high and muddy, but calm. He brought his chest waders to the launch ramp and was thigh-deep in water launching the boat. Now that is customer service! We got underway and made a run to a flooded backwater the Roger likes to call Disneyland. Boy did it live up to its name. Over the proceeding few hours we hammered bass stacked up like sardines in a can, fish averaging 2-3 pounds with a few 4 and 5 pounders mixed in. Spinnerbaits and flipping craws at the flooded timber and shoreline structure was the key. One spot near a pair of outflow pipes that was only about 100 feet long yielded about 30 bass, as well as one of the biggest pickerel I had ever seen!

We tried a few other spots hoping for a crankbait bite, but that never materialized. We then made our way to another flooded area near a train bridge, and in one back corner the bass were stacked up yet again. We landed another dozen or so fish there, with my brother and Roger landing the two biggest fish of the day just before we called it quits around 2:00. Roger tried to keep track of all the bass we caught, but he lost count around 50!

Another awesome trip with Roger who showed us the best spots on the lake and provided the custom-poured craws that were the ticket today. With all the catching we did, it will take me a while to sift through all the video I got, so look for that within the next couple of days.