Champlain 5/22-23 (long winded)

Our plan was to fish smallies on the big water one day and LM and pike around Ticonderoga the other. Going by the National weather service, were decided to fish the protected water around Ti on Saturday and hop they were right about the calm on Sunday.

Started out with a real nasty blow on Saturday, but it was out of the north, not the SSE. I drizzled on and off most of the morning. The temp never got about 56. But by 9am that north wind was a gentle breeze and by noon it was glass calm. We probably should have left and gone to the big water for smallies, but we were catching too many fish to leave. We went to one big point at 7AM, and left it at 5PM. We shared it with one other boat for most of the day -- they came in at about 8 and were still there when we left. A lot of other boats came through, but save one (more on which later) they just fished the shoreline and left without catching anything. We were 100 to 150 yards off shore, for the most part. Within 20 minutes after we arrived, we'd already caught 10LM 2 northerns and 2 chain pickerel, throwing spinnerbaits.

It was 4PM when we started "one last pass" down the side of the point. At that point we had caught more than 60 LMB, 8 northerns and 15 pickerel. (unusual for the pickerel to outnumber the pike there, but it seem to have been swinging in that direction over the past few years). I was experimenting with a variety of stuff, and had caught fish on several spinnerbaits (although a very subdued "blue shad" skirted, 1 oz singlespin with a nickel blade was by far my most productive), a gold Pointer 78 Jerkbait (which seemed to be catching the larger fish) and LC's new heavily salted, sinking Slug-Gos, along with a couple on salted, sinking Spankies. My son on the other hand, threw the same, 1 oz spinnerbait (Hideously bright and huge -- we call it Tom's Toothy Critter Gitter -- all day. I probably had more bass than him, he had way more of the toothy guys, but was still responsible for boating 25 or so of the LMB.

Then, when we were in "one more pass" mode, I started throwing the wacky rig (with the salted spanky) again, and went into 'the zone'. For more than 45 minutes, I caught a fish on every cast. The biggest was maybe 3-1/2, most of the rest around 2-1/4. Tom kept throwing his big spinnerbait, and caught a half dozen fish during my run. I kept telling him to switch, but he said, "This has been good though for them all day, it's good enough for them now."

In the midst of my run, two guys in a little boat (being a small boat fisherman myself, I have a great deal of empathy for fellow small boat anglers) who were fishing along the bank, happened to notice us out there catching fish like non-stop. so they immediately turned and headed out to where we were.

Last night, it poured. This morning, the flags were hanging straight down. OK! Smallies on the big water. We headed for Button Bay State Park. And when we got there, it was obvious that launching the boat would have been a dumb idea. It was white-caps as far as the eye could see. So we turned around and headed back to Ti. Still calm there. We put the boat in and headed back to yesterday's hotspot. The boat we'd shared the point with was already there. Half-way into the first pass, the wind arrived from the north. In three passes, we managed only 1 bass, 2 pike and 1 pickerel, with my son's big ugly spinnerbait being responsible for all but one of the pike (which bit MY bigugly spinnerbait).

Off we went, in search of calmer water and more active fish. Unlike Saturday's constant action, we had to work out butts off to put anything together. I ended up scratching out a limit of bass, all on a 1 oz singlespin witha green pumpkin skirt (NOBODY throws green pumpkin spinnerbaits, but in my experience, it's always been a good dark day producer). The weird thing is that 4 of the 6 bass I caught on Sunday were bigger than any of the bass I caught on Saturday when they were really on. One of the fish I caught drop shotting a green pumpkin speedworm. The rest were on the spinnerbait.

Anyway, the same little boat with two guys in it from the previous afternoon pulled in on us twice today immediately after we caught a fish. Talk about classless.

All the spinnerbait fish today, and almost all the spinnerbait fish yesterday came with the lure dropping down on a pause in the retrieve. The jerkbait fish all hit on lengthy pauses with the lure hovering in place. In Sat, I was happy that no toothy crittersshowed interest in the expensive jerkbait (which I was fishing on 8 pound mono). Today, I got two of them bitten off. All the rest of the fish came on soft plastics that were being deadsticked or nearly so. The fishing was a lot different Sun than Sat, but both days, the fish showed no interest in bottom bouncing presentations, or in anything moving along horizontally. They seemed to want it still or slowly sinking, but still in the upper half of the water column. Never even had a hit on a T-rigged plastic or a jig -- which is really unusual for me, as that's the way I prefer to fish.

All in all, it was a great trip despite the weatherman's innacurate predictions and the two classless hole jumpers. I'll be headed back up in a couple weeks. I'll post some pics tomorrow night.

RichZ© www.richz.com/fishing

Again... thanks for sharing all these things with us, Mr. Z.

RichZ© www.richz.com/fishing