Lake Champlain 2025 End of year summary
Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2025 9:50 am
This year turned into one of the best years in recent memory! Summarizing my spread sheet today I made it out 66 days on Champlain with 43 of those trips on Rick's / Chris / Reggie / Randy's boats. We landed 296 legal salmon / rainbows / browns this season (trips averaged 6.5 hours a trip with the lines in the water). This was our best year on Browns and Rainbows in 45 years since I started fishing at age 18 a freshman at UVM. With others boats help we completed 2 studies for Graham (Diet Study / Transmitter work) and for a third year fin clip data which is ongoing for Kurt Heim as well.
We did a lot of testing this year on Ric's boat with Garmin's Panoptics / Smart Troll / FishHawk / Electric trolling motor on the bow for trolling which added to the fun. Using 5 blocks or gallons of ice we were able to keep fish alive in the live well for the two studies bringing fish each month live to the dock for Graham at 55F in the live well from mid June to October. I fished the LCI for the first time since 1994 with Ric and had so much fun I am signing up again in 2026. Not counting 3 week long trips to Ontario it was a very busy season!
Look forward to 2026!
We did a lot of testing this year on Ric's boat with Garmin's Panoptics / Smart Troll / FishHawk / Electric trolling motor on the bow for trolling which added to the fun. Using 5 blocks or gallons of ice we were able to keep fish alive in the live well for the two studies bringing fish each month live to the dock for Graham at 55F in the live well from mid June to October. I fished the LCI for the first time since 1994 with Ric and had so much fun I am signing up again in 2026. Not counting 3 week long trips to Ontario it was a very busy season!
Look forward to 2026!