Lake Champlain Pre Spawn Bonanza

[fishingmortgageman]

For the last 7 years I have made a May trip to northern Lake Champlain for smallmouth. Lake Champlain is big water and the weather up there is always a challenge. It usually is windy and the weather changes every couple of hours. I usually go for 3 or 4 days and usually I am lucky to fish 2 days. I have had some very good days, but it is very hard to find the weather pattern that will put the fish in the mood to bite.

This year the I finally got lucky. I headed north Monday and picked up my boat in Vermont and 8 hours later I was at the lake. We fished for 2 1/2 days and caught 200 plus fish. The beauty of Champlain, at this time of the year is the size of the fish. 5 fish were 14" or less, 160 fish were between 15-18", 25 fish were 19-20", and 12 fish were 21-22". These fish were all incredibly fat and healthy and ready to spawn. The heaviest was 5.75#s. Tuesday was a bright sunny day and the water warmed from 55 degrees to 58 at the end of the day. This must have been the trigger that started the fish migration. Wednesday was another bright sunny day and fish were everywhere. Every prime spawning area was loaded with fish cruising the 4' shallows. We saw hundreds and hundreds of them. Tuesday we caught most of our fish on jerkbaits but on Wednesday they loved the weightless senkos in the shallow water. The sun not only brought the smallmouth in but we also caught largemouth, perch, crappy, bluegill, pike, gar,bowfin, and musky. The musky inhaled a 12" smallmouth that I was reeling in. Thursday the big fish had come in and we had some cloud cover. It was again a jerkbait bite and I had 3 21" fish on 3 consecutive casts. This trip was a trip of a lifetime and is proof that if you put in your time on the water you will eventually reap the benefits.