Lake Champlain United - Forums

Great fish even better story. Its cool you put back a derby money fish so you did not have to kill it. Ramel

Saw that on Facebook Keith and I thought that was you! Congratulations and great video! Wonderful choice to let that old fish swim away to get bigger!

Epic adventure Keith and co. Very sporting of you letting a behemouth like that swim on. I spent alot of time on Caspian in the late 90's early 2000's ice fishing for weeks on end and met some great old timers with even better stories of the lake. One who was a farmer from up the road had taken many 20+ lbs. lakers from shore at ice out. He had 1 mounted and I beleive it still hangs at Wiley's general store along side 2 others in the 20's. One found washed up on shore dead. One of our outtings I spoke with a fisheries biologist who had done nettting and electro shocking there, he mentioned of a fish well into the 30's (pounds!) they had shocked during the previous summer! We targeted rainbows and got some real beaties then. I have my best on the wall, 28" around 8 lbs or so, never weighed it. It didn't even compare to one we lost at the hole one night tho! That was 15 yrs ago any way. Again, great job guys, congrats!

Yeah Caspian use to produce a lot of monsters. There was a major smelt die-off (really people were pulling 5gal pales out day after day) about 5 years ago that it is starting to recover from now. I am not sure how frequently people catch 20lb fish there any longer, but from what I am being told anecdotally there haven't been many in the last 10 or so years. There are at least 2 in there as one 18lb was caught 3 years ago through the ice and released, and mine was as well.

Theres more caught than you think. Especially in the winter. I know a group of guys that fish it primarily all trout season every winter. Atleast one a year gets caught by them. All get released. Theyre not the only ones.

Very possible. I have some friends who ice fish it. I've heard of several 18-19lb in the last few years. If there is a person consistently catching 20+lb fish there I would love to meet them and learn their ways haha.