Lake Champlain United - Forums

Spent 5 hours on the IS yesterday - what a beautiful day on the water! Marked a bunch of fish but caught perch...sigh. Threw everything at 'em, but couldn't connect. HOWEVER - there was one interesting thing that did happen. I hooked (yes, in the mouth) a 9" alewife. What's up with that? I thought they only ate tiny invertibrates and zooplankton. Maybe the alewives are getting so large that they are eating the stocker salmon? If you want to try for lunker alewives, I was using a brown trout speedy at 50', back 40' over 90 fow, at 2.4 mph. Good luck!

Is there a master angler category for alewives?

Found some fish at an old haunt north of Hyde point and half way to St A bay. Haven’t been up there for a few years. Most of the bait etc was down 40-50 but pretty much everything came on copper and green needlefish set as sliders. Nothing big but at mid day we get what we are dealt . Sounds like those willing to go to some of the old hot spots are finding some fish.

i have caught alewives casting with krocodiles in the spring and had plenty of follows to.

I landed a 4" rainbow smelt that bit a speedy last season in Bulwaga, and we always see small perch nailing lures that are bigger than they are, but plankton feeders?

Alewives will decimate Perch Fry, Smelt Fry, if the Alewife Spawning season coincides too closely with the smelt hatch, can be caught on small fly patterns, many will aggressively follow a spoon during the spawning season (which I thought triggered a spawning urge) and, yes, the larger ones will be occasionally be caught in the mouth on a spoon. Just plankton eaters ... I don't think so but certainly do eat zooplankton and small invertebrates.