The bass fishing at Lake Champlain has changed a lot, especially over the past five years or so. Part of that has to do with the effectiveness of forward-facing sonar and the pressure it puts on the fish. Another factor is alewives have become a major food source for the bass.
Alewives were not a factor at Champlain when I fished a tournament there for the first time in 2010. The bass chomped on craws, yellow perch and bluegill. Many bass still do that in shallow water. But 95% of the smallmouth now chase alewives offshore.
On that first visit to this beautiful lake, I dropped hundreds of waypoints on rockpiles and single boulders 10 to 20 feet deep. If I threw a drop shot anywhere near one of those spots, I’d catch smallmouth bass.
The bass don’t live on those places now. If I fished all the rocky spots I marked in 2010, I’d be lucky to catch five bass in a day’s fishing.
Fishing Champlain isn’t as easy as in years past, but the fishery is as awesome as ever. You just have to evolve with what’s happening.
These days, Champlain supports two groups of bass. One group lives on shallow rockpiles mixed with grass. The other group of bass lives in the middle of the lake.
I fished shallow during the tournament and caught all my bass no deeper than 4 feet. I targeted isolated rockpiles in Missisquoi Bay I had marked in my FLW days. Those spots are now grown up with milfoil and other aquatic grass.
I caught around 15 keepers a day winding a ChatterBait on 20-pound line and casting a black 4-inch wacky rigged Senko. Five of the 15 bass I weighed in were largemouth; the rest were smallmouth. I caught some of the smallmouth casting the Senko to cruising fish. I really enjoyed fishing a tournament where I got to do stuff like that again.
I finished in 39th place, which pulled me up to 22nd in the Progressive Bassmaster Angler of the Year point standings. I still need to catch them in the last tournament at the St. Lawrence River to make the Bassmaster Classic, but I won’t need a high finish to make that happen.
Between week
When the Elite Series makes its Northern Swing to end the season, we typically have two tournaments back-to-back. This year, B.A.S.S scheduled a week off between Champlain and the St. Lawrence River.
My dad flew in to meet me after the Champlain tournament, and we spent Monday through Friday fishing and sight fishing. It was his first trip to the state of New York.
We started by fishing Champlain at a leisurely pace, taking in the scenery and stopping to get lunch on the water. We pulled up to the best spot I had in the tournament, and I hauled in a 5-pound bass on my first cast with a black Senko. I never caught a bass over 4 pounds in the tournament. My dad caught a 4-pound, 4-ounce smallmouth on the same bait — his biggest smallmouth ever.
We also fished a few small lakes near Lake Placid, the sight of the 1980 Winter Olympics. We caught a ton of bass, including some nice 4- and 5-pound smallmouth and largemouth.
We made great memories that week. I hope to make more memories at the Elite Series finale on the St. Lawrence River.
