Lake Champlain 6/25-6/26

[Lard Almighty]

Saturday: My dad and I met Roger at the launch in Crown Point at 5 AM. Headed over to a bank with flooded grass and buck brush to start the morning. Started out throwing buzzbaits, almost immediately bass were blowing up noisily on them, but very few hook-ups. After landing a few, we turned around and hit the same bank again, and this time the fish were getting stuck. Caught numerous largemouths, plus a bonus pike. They were slamming topwaters; both buzzbaits and a custom plastic frog that Roger makes himself.

We moved to another bank with similar cover, and the action started right up again. Once again, they were keyed in on the buzzbait, sometimes barely letting it hit the water before they crashed it. The rain rolled in, shifting from light to torrential, but the fish stayed active. After a few doubles and a few sections of bank that yielded strikes on nearly every cast, we rounded out the day fishing some nearby bridge pilings. Immediately my dad hooks up with a monster that nearly rips the rod out of his hands. The way it was fighting we were figuring it was a big pike, so imagine our surprise when a 6+ lb. largemouth breaks the surface! After nearly losing his rod again, he finally landed the fish and broke out in a smile that didn't go away the whole weekend. At 11:00 it was back to the launch. All told, we caught about 40-45 bass between the three of us, with most in the 3-5 lb. range. The black buzzbait was the hot lure.

Sunday: Same time, same place, we headed over to the same bank we started on Saturday. Throwing the black buzzbait Dad caught fire, landing 7 or 8 nice bass, leaving Roger and I to pick at his leftovers on plastics. After a couple of stops that weren't very productive, we moved over to the bank we fished in the rain on Saturday, and had steady action, but not nearly as good as the day before. We ran that bank twice catching fish on both passes. That took us to the end of the fishing day. We caught about 25-30 fish on Sunday, most about 3 lbs. with a few 4 lb. fish mixed in.

Sunday was solid, but Saturday was insane. Quite possibly the best day of bass fishing I have ever had, considering the size and quantity of fish. Roger remarked that, had we been fishing a buddy tournament, we would have won handily on both days. For anyone considering fishing Lake Champlain, stop sitting on the fence and go! There is probably no better largemouth bass lake in the Northeast.

Video in production; look for it in the next few days!