Thursday, May 28 - Back on the river

Came home early from vacation in Vermont, due to weather.

Hit the river at a little before 8am. We had heavy fog...perfect!

Found fish in typcial post-spawn areas. Since water is still rather cool (64-66 degrees), the "mass exodus" from the shallows hasn't happened yet. This area is famous for the smallies disappearing once the water temp hits about 70 degrees. But, they are still here, as of today.

Landed 15 Smallies with the biggest being 4 lbs 5 oz.

See video as well.

Tuesday, May 26 - Lake Champlain

Finally, a decent weather day!

It was too cold (52ish) in the morning for Debbi, so Dad and I hit the water. We headed for Mallets Creek, since we were able to get on fish there yesterday. 2nd cast...nailed a decent Pike!

We ended up getting about a dozen Largemouth in the first 30-45 minutes. We left there and hit a spot that looked good on the map. Dad ended up slipping off the back of the boat and got soaked. So, I took him back to the house and picked up Debbi.

We hit Mallets Creek, then Inner Mallets Bay. We found Smallies and Largemouth starting to bed on the west side of the bay.

After searching around a bit, we ended up at Lamoille River and got on a really cool pattern. This is a slow river with decent depth (to about 10 feet). Where the river meets the lake, there are downed trees all along the banks. It took a little while to put it together, but here is the pattern...

Outside bends on both sides of the island (more current). Downed trees that extended to the drop off. At first, it seemed the trees were random, but the trees that extended to the drop from 3 feet to 7-9, were definitely the ticket. In these trees, we found packs of post-spawn smallies in groups of 6-30 fish. If you snuck up on them, you could actually see them in the branches.

Long casts with spinnerbaits as we approached and then tubes and drop shots as we got closer, put smallies in the boat.

We also picked up a couple of nice Pike on the spinnerbaits.

Monday, May 25 - Lake Champlain

Geeze, another tough day! This time, it blew like a hurricane all day. Seriously...20-30 sustained, all day long.

We hit Mallet's Creek first, and each caught 5-6 largemouth. Nothing big, but we got our lines tugged.

Next, we ran into a beautiful little river, named Lamoille River. Unfortunately, it looked better than it turned out to be. Full of wood, plenty of depth...it looked fantastic. We ended up picking up a couple of smallies and pike. The pike were 25-30 inches or so...nothing big.

We ran around a bit, making the long run up to Keeler Bay and tried to make it to the Gut...but it was just too rough. Didn't do much at all.

Finally, ran back into Mallet's and found a few smallies on beds in a bay out near the sea wall.

Total for today was something like: 10 smallies, 12 largemouth, 2 pike and 1 pickerel.

The weather forecast looks pretty bad for the latter part of the week, so we may actually go home early. Wish us luck tomorrow!

Sunday - May 24 - Lake Champlain

Our first real day on the water at Lake Champlain...

On one hand, it was a nice day, as we met a really cool guy and guide, named Mickey Maynard. Mickey really knows the lake and is a super cool guy to fish with.

On the other hand, Mother Nature wasn't kind to us. The day started out raining. It rained steady, for the first couple of hours. Not a great way to start the day, because we were wet the rest of the day. Of course, to add insult to injury, it got windy for the rest of the day. Debbi just couldn't deal with the cold/wet conditions, so we took her back to the launch early.

Dad, Mickey and I kept working at it. Through the day, we fished many areas within Inner and Outer Mallets Bay, as well as Keeler Bay and around Savage Island.

Water temps generally ranged from as as low as 52 in the Inland Sea to 58 or so in some areas of Mallet's Bay. The smallies were just starting to move shallow. We found a few males up shallow around Savage Island. Females were out in 12-15 feet and could be caught, if we slowed down enough.

Didn't keep real good count, but I guess we caught something like 10 smallies and 10 largemouth.

Tough day, but we learned a little bit about Lake Champlain and made a new friend in Mickey Maynard.

You can learn more about Mickey and his guide service through his website: http://www.angelfire.com/home/lake/fishingcharter.html

Vacation begins! Lake Champlain

We arrived today...in Colchester, VT. Debbi, Matt, Mom, Dad...and me.

We have a nice little house on the lake...right on the water. Check out the view...

We are fishing with a guide tomorrow, so hopefully we'll get a good idea of some current patterns and be able to get on the fish much faster for the rest of the week.

Will post pictures tomorrow...

Mother's Day Madness (5/10/09)

Got out for some fishing on the river Sunday morning. Was on the water at 7am and fished until noon or so.

Morning started off pretty cool...about 54 degrees. Water temps were around 62-63. Water was pretty darned muddy, about 12-18 inches of visibility.

Started out in my usual spots between the bridges in Columbia. I got about 6 fish in the first 2 hours, so it was pretty slow. Of those, only one was over 3 lbs. I had to really work the areas slow with MANY casts, since the water was so muddy.

As the morning went on, it got very windy. 15-20 MPH sustained. It was very difficult to control the boat because the wind was coming almost directly down the river. The wind and current together were really tough to deal with.

I worked the lower rocks, down near the 3 islands and caught a couple more.

Then, I made a long run upriver to the west side, where the wind was partially blocked. Only caught one fish...but, it was 5 lbs 3 oz!

No pic's today, since I was alone, but there is some video. As my luck would have it, when I caught the 5-3, I thought I was recording, but it was on pause. After I let the fish go and hit the record button again (to pause it), I realized that I didnt get any of it recorded. I'll post the video later and you can see my reaction...it's pretty funny. This explains the "Madness" in today's title, LOL.

Smallies are definitely post-spawn now. I still have not found any beds or bass that look/act like they are protecting beds...very strange.

Total for the day was: 10 smallies (5-3, 3-6 and 3-0 were biggest three)

Until next time...FISH ON!

Post spawn, already!?! May 2, 2009

You may recall from my post last week, that I mentioned the near 90 degree air temps and how this would mess up the fishing...well, I was right.

Last weekend, the fish were still pre-spawn. Water temps were in the mid-50's and the fishing was fantastic! Well, we had about 4 days in a row of 80-88 degree air temps. This made the water temp rise very quickly.

The result was this...

The water temps prior, were not high enough to push the males to the shallows and start making beds. But, the females were ripe. I believe that the spike in water temps caused a false spawn. The big females that I caught last week that were full of eggs, were spawned out this week. I looked everywhere and did not find a single bed. Nor did I catch a single male that I think was protecting a bed.

Hopefully, I'm wrong. If I'm right...hopefully not all of the females dropped their eggs. Generally, not all of the fish spawn at the same time and the bigger fish typically spawn first.

To add to the problem, we are supposed to get about 4 days of rain, which will bring the river up considerably. These up's and down's in water conditions are the reason why we have such huge swings in year class success and failure. It's the nature of a shallow river.

No pictures from yesterday, as I was by myself. One video posted with a few of the smallies I caught.

Totals for yesterday were: 18 Largemouths, to 2.5 lbs and 9 smallies, to 4-0.