After back to back days of waking up at 3:50am and being at the launch
to meet Obass for 4:30.. fishing for 3 hours and heading to work for the
next 9 hours, i can honestly say that i am shot. After i write this its
most likely time for a nap. Yesterday the hits started pretty quickly
at our first spot. With some rolls and a few missed strikes... mike
nails a 34 inch fish on a white sad shad and i proceed to set on a fish
only to have my 20 lb braid with 60 lb leader snap off at the braid. So i
grab my other rod and bam... again same thing happens. My drag wasnt
too tight i dont think.. it was possibly the excitement of having my
first top water striper ever that was forcing my hook sets to be a
little on the violent side... lesson learned. I tie up again and get the
line rapped in the eye of my rod and watch a sad shad go flying into
the distance. I was pissed at this point. Mike caught one more around
33/34 inches and then the hits stopped just like that.
That
morning i went straight to WalMart and bought some 30 lb braid and some
50 lb braid and re spooled immediately. Stopped at a local bait shop
bought some Yum Houdini Shads in Chartreuse and some Slug Go's and slug
go hooks and got ready for my next trip not knowing it would be the next
morning. We were fishing by 4:45 and this day me and mike switched
rolls. He started with a sailing bait into the darkness and i hooked up
on the first strike of the day while he was tying up another bait. It
gave me an amazing fight. Pulling drag multiple times and probably took 3
minutes to get too my thumb. Fish went 33.5 inches and i suddenly was
very awake. I ended up catching one more around 31-32 inches a short
time later on my only other hit of the day. Mike had one fish snap him
off and had 3 other explosions of fish whiffing the bait.
So 2
days of fishing and only 4 fish caught. I had fun catching my first top
water bass but i also know it can be much better than that and i will
soon be on a mission to beat these days. Id say i got a little fever..
and the only prescription is more fishing! and hopefully a little bit of
sleep. My last keeper i was 10 years old fishing with my Dad off the
beach at hammonasett using a fresh cut of hickory shad that we caught
that morning in clinton and that fish was 40 inches and 28 pounds. So i
have a decent number to beat right from the start. That fish was in the
paper which was pretty cool as a kid. during the fight my dad held my
belt loop to keep me from being dragged in. haha good times. Ill be
out tomorrow morning somewhere... if anyone see's the silver sylvan
haulin bass 2 come say hey!
Thanks Mike for taking me out these last 2 days. always a blast.
Dedicated too : Fist bump Paulie
DAY 1:
It all started at a
Cumberland Farms somewhere in Massachusetts, where we stopped to fill up
on gas and grab a cup of coffee at 430 am. In walks a man who i SWEAR i
have seen before in that gas station. He hobbles a bit, and might not
be 100% upstairs, but he is always friendly. Sure enough, he walks right
over to Joe, and mutters something unintelligibly along the lines of "Put it up brother, lemme get a fist pump!"
raising his hand in the air for a knuckle bump. Joe smiles and says
right on man, and knuckles up. I am always weary of strangers but this
guy was cool 
and does the same thing to me. 2 knuckle bumps later with a complete
stranger who was just feeling good, we hopped in the truck on our way,
and dubbed our new charismatic friend "Fist Pump Pauley". It completely
set the tone for the trip!!!
We arrived on the lake around 830, and found some fish immediately throwing the following baits:
Not
pictured is the 4 inch green Paul-e-Worm Shep Sr. hammers fish on,
which we also used to land about 20 or so fish. Most of our fish on day
one were landed on either Chatterbaits or spinnerbaits, but when the
wind died mid day, so did the active bite, and we wormed fish through
the lull. We found a few here and there, no real stacks of fish and
nothing of any noteworthy size. Most of our bass were between 1-2
pounds, small to decent keepers, but not the Champlain chunks you drive
up for, and our best bass of the day was a ho-hum 4 pound largemouth Joe
got on a spinnerbait. We started driving north after fishing a variety
of southern waters, and ran into Barn1, up for a few days to open the
cabin and fish. He mentioned similar results to ours for the day, but
also mentioned the bite further north was better for quality fish. We
parted ways looking for a hot bit just a few miles north, and found the
back 3 hours of the day to be an improvement overall.
Throughout
the day, we saw a LOT of fish! Longnose Gar were surfacing throughout
much of the lake, and a few schools of decent 10 pound class drum were
spotted south of Ti Point. We also saw a handfull of 5-8 pound bowfin,
but couldnt get a hook up going. Northern Pike were all but absent for
this trip, probably recovering from thier recent spawn. The alewife kill
mentioned on this and other sites wasnt happening, or was done in Ti,
and we saw only a few north of the launch at all. The water levels were
back to normal, and the temps were 58-66 depending on time of day. Water
clarity always plays a factor up there, and we found fish in mostly
clear water, but found our best fishing in slightly stained water.
Slightly stained on Champlain would be a lot dirtier than anything CT
has, but it was fishable murky; the BEST kind of clarity!
With
30+ bass in the boat, we finished up on a rock point that was pretty
murky compared to the rest of the water we targeted and IMMEDIATELY
hooked up on 3 pound fish. with about 1.5 hours left in the day, we
decided to hammer this spot and the adjacent shoreline/pocket with
different baits to see what was happening. The chatterbait led the pack,
and with it we boated about 15 more keeper bass to 4 pounds, and
another dozen short fish. Bass were stacking up well with the rising
wind, and hiding right in the mudline. Slow rolling the baits with
twitches drew strikes from fish that simply mush mouthed the bait, and
as soon as you lost the weight of the lure, it was time to load up!
About our 3rd pass, i had a great hit from a fish, reared back, and the
rod simply STOPPED! The fish shook 2-3 times, and decided to take
control, running slowly against my drag and 12 pound test over the back
of the boat. I instantly knew this wasnt a bass, and with the amount of
power being displayed i either had a record-class northern, or one of
the dozens of other species of HUGE fish that swim in Champlain. The
"slow" had me thinking carp, but the rolling hinted at a BIG channel
cat... 35 minutes later of Joey driving the boat following the fish,
playing hopscotch between decks, and about the best one-shot-or-its-over
net job i've ever seen, and my partner in crime hoisted a Channel Matt worthy
catfish over the rail. It will go down as the largest freshwater fish
ive landed, and weighed in at 19 pounds, 14 ounces. I actually think Joe
was more pumped than i was, and i cant thank you enough for that maneuver boatside when that beast dug down. 
A
shout out to "Fist Pump Pauley" and a knuckle bump later, we released
the fish after a few photos, which swam off immediately. With only a
little time left, Joe got on the horn and shot some of those photos to
friends, but i picked the rod back up and turned the boat back on the
point. I landed 5 quality 2-3 pound bass in 5 casts, missed 2 more, and
landed another 3 fish on 10 casts. It was absurd! we finished the day
with 59 keeper bass, 1 northern, 2 rock bass, 18 nice pickerel around
2-4 pounds each, and one monster catfish. we also had around 20 short
largemouths that kept the rod bent throughout the day. A hundred fish on
day one? OH YEAH!
This wasnt even the GOOD day....
O'
DAY 2:
Day one was good, but we noticed a pattern in the flurry of bass at the
end of day one, and discussed our plan that night to focus on hard
structure among the weeded areas. It would mean a run further north, but
not up to the next launch, so sticking to Ti and exploring some back
creeks and bays that were run dry last season was how we started. We
found a bunch of small keepers here, and had a good time going up into
some ponds and beaver dams, but aside from some huge bowfin sightings
the fishing was less than steller. A lot of fun though taking the boat
into places i think only some geese have been in. We bailed on the
exploratory phase and headed out to our first spot along some rip rap.
HAMMER
TIME! from the first few casts, we drifted with the wind along a rocky
shoreline fishing 3-5 feet and worked up 20 good keeper bass and a half
dozen shorts in 3 hours. our best fish was a solid 4, and our average
size went from a pound and a half to close to 3. Joey had big fish on a
black and blue chatterbait he switched to, a solid 4.4
Knowing
we found the pattern that would provide more bites, we started hopping
spot to spot, and along the way landed 2-3 fish here and thre, but stuck
out on a few more spots than we would have liked. mid day found our
average size still very good, with 3 fish over 4 in the boat, almost
zero pickerel or panfish, and only a handful of short bass. I found a
pod of fish on what i said was going to be my last cast in a small weedy
bay, only to land this 4 lb 14 ounce largie, then 6 of her friends
between Joe and I.
30
fish in at 2pm, we knew we were missing the x factor; on Champlain this
is the difference between a 40 fish day and a hundred fish day
The
"x" factor for us was USING the wind to our advantage. earlier on our
first hot spot, the wind quartered the bank, sweeping water left to
right across weeds and rocks, drawing whatever baitfish in towards
gamefish. ya hear about it, but you dont SEE these situations in lakes
in ct very often. Champlain is the place where everything you read about
in books magazines and see on tv comes true; patterns exist, multiple
patterns can target totally separate populations of fish. i found a
rocky point, and within 3 casts slammed the hook home on another 3
pounder. Then another....then another... I had 3 fish over the rail
before Joey and I hooked into this sweet double of a near 5 and 3... Joe
saved his casts for the big one!
we
landed one after another over the next 2 hours, all the while noticing a
large increase in the Gar activity from yesterday, specifically right
where we were fishing. At one point i accidently foul hooked one of
those and the whole school spooked a bit, showing us how many of them
were around. It got nuts at times with fish rolling all around the boat
and we realized that the bass were simply mixed right in amongst this
gar fest. It wasnt just bass though, as we found our only drum of the
trip:
well, another couple of bass in, i switched to a cotton cordell super
spot, and cleaned up on 2 pounders in short order, when i get a solid
thump fishing inside the mudline. some thrashing on the surface, and
after a quick fight, i landed my first Gar ever! VERY COOL!!!
just
a small one compared to the ones that were swimming by, but awesome
none the less! Joey was stoked, and rambling on and on about how it
would make his trip to hook one... well, this fish went 43.5 inches on a keitech and wrapped the whole damn line around its snout in the
process. Man ,it went nuts on the surface once hooked, shot straight up
out of the water 3 feet! short fights and not a ton of power, but super
cool!
landed
another mid sized fish at the boat but shook it off on the rattletrap.
some of the gar we saw would have been over 5 feet easily!
Ya
think that would be enough, but the bass fishing just went crazy after
that. Joe took a breather until i landed my 4th fish since he sat and when i pulled this one out of the net, it weighed 6.1, my largest weighed bass in over 15 years!
at
some point, i was alternating between a chatterbait and a super spot,
and hooked into this toothy critter, one of only two we landed.
Shortly
after, with the sun setting, we decided it would be a good time to hit
the road. we were beat, but totally pumped. when all was said and done,
we manage 3 pickerel, 1 pike, 4 gar, 1 drum, 20 short bass, and a
spectacular 82 keeper largemouths. our best 5 would have gone 23.85,
(joe dropped another 5+ that would have given us 25! we didnt even
care!)
i have landed more bass, i have landed a better 5 fish
bag. but this was a trip to rival anything Erie or Maine has offered.
Joe, i could not have fished like that with anyone else, and i know
another day would have been entirely possible of flat out ridiculous
fishing around the clock if only work didnt interfere...
thanks for clearing your schedule and running on coffee and buffalo chix wraps for 2 days! WORTH IT?
O'
