Lake Champlain United - Forums

Wanted to fish Monday and after a few calls the interest was so high we had to call out another boat out of New Hampshire to float all interested parties.... John trailered his fishmaster 196 for 3 hrs on the rumor of open water leading to good fishing. The BONUS was his daughter jumping in for a little private school educational break...

We all arrived at converse... the CAOS crew consisted on John, his daughter Aubrey, Fish Dawg and Dave F. The Reelax crew was 1st mate Dave Adams and Jeff Rosetti running gear...

Launch was clean and dry!!! thanks instigator!!

We had a short pause waiting for fresh donuts from Thorny’s Baker.. Jeff got him riled up at the counter showing up to early and Thorny was already at work able to smooth things over so we didn’t get day old nuts to eat.

730 the 2 boat armada was on plane headed east toward whalans.... while setting up the 2nd line Dave gets a release and 1st fish on... it is a nice clean 18” salmon... that really got the hopes up high for a great day... we finished setting up, circled and bam fish on.... laker.......... bam.... while fighting doubles.... laker #2... hmmmm


We run a line where we find bait and pick up a couple nice Lakers... they do fight a little better this time of year

Caos radios in, they are the the bite... they also having the same result... Lakers.....

By far the best spoon was the new Blueberry Pancake from Crazy Ivan. We only had 1 But it had a fine day indeed... there is a pic of it included...
The 2 biggest lakers came off that copper and orange ugly thing?




We fish the Bay Area for 2 more hrs without sign of any more silver... we have doubles and triples and lots of fun there, but no silver...

Time to do a major search. Caos hugs the VT shore, Reelax on the NY shore... we spend the next 6 hrs slowing going south looking at bait profiles all the way.... for me it was.... ball grabber, unicorn, grog, snakes den, palisades, ( we both assaulted diamond from each side) barn rock, north of Westport, barbers, young bay, south south, dodging some ice burgs...... till we finally hit the ice pack just north of Fishville... each of us setup where we saw the best looking bait and each found LAkers... when we set up... then.... more Lakers....

Flies, and sticks did not produce any action for us....

One notable thing is DA caught a laker with only 1 eyeball.... the starboard eye was completely missing???? Ol one eye had a belly full of alewives so it was not effecting his feeding!!! He was also short and fat... see pics...

We let him go so someone else could check him out....


I am not saying the salmon are gone.... It just takes work to find them.... we all agree if we spent the whole day hammering the 1st hot bite we could have 2x the final fish landed.... but it was the search that we wanted to accomplish... although we never found the salmon, there is STILL plenty of open water to look...we will be back soon

We ended up well fed , after hotdogs, italian sausages, 7 layer dip, lobster chowder and hamburgers.... CAOS also has the trolling grill bug and also outs in a good hot feed....and very tired putting boats on trailer as the sun set. What a great day to be 5e only 2 boats on the lake.......

CAOS was not running a counter, but between us we figure we landed somewhere around 40 fish total, Lakers topping out around 10lbs... releases had to be over 100, when you found em, the rods were popping..

All in all the best day of the lake so far in 2020... it will only get better... ice bergs are not north of diamond and they are rare even below there....

P.s. birds were NOT working bait anywhere in the whole basin as far as we could see???? WTF?

Thanks to all 6 fishermen who shared the awesome day on the lake yesterday!!?!? Even the school skipper

Fish on!!!

great lots of action and yes lakers fight lot better this time of year . thanks for the pics matt

Here’s a video shot on the way back up the lake around 4pm.

https://youtu.be/QFmnS1UUmkY



Here is one with double Lakers on down line and cheater...

https://youtu.be/Yjbr15qTYBg

nice job guys!!!!looks like a beautiful day on the water

Great post and pics Matt.
Wish more boats were fishing this time of year. We miss the reports.

Great post & pictures Matt.

Looks like a Fun Time and nice to see everyone out. I'm envious …...Y'a know Lakers or not Gott'a Feel the Pull!

I'm retired now Dec 12 last but the Honey Do list had really built up so "getter done" and

"I'll Be Back"

Keep the lake open Please...…

P.S. that Laker was A Pirate.... ARGG!

Great read! What is that orange thing?

tamiron wrote:Great read! What is that orange thing?

I have no idea what it is. Fisherman leave spoons and gear aboard my boat because I won’t take gas money.. that thing was left on the boat this fall by someone... not sure who or where it came from...

It has a great action but is toooo big for salmon... IMHO..

Whoo hooo, felt like I was there reading this report..... mabye next time! You guys had me so pumped up I hit the ice at 4 am and was at work by 9! Love it... cant wait to load up and head north again! Very cool, them smash dogs looked awsome!

My trip started the night before at half time of the Super Bowl went I mentioned to my bride I was going fishn in the morning with reelax , well my daughter aubrey was listening at the counter having a snack when she jumped up and said dad I wanna go!
I replied, no Aubs you have school tomorrow. The sad look on her face made me melt like butter...so I proceeded to explain how cold and windy it’s gonna be and how we are marathon fishn from 7am till dark, I figured I could persuade her to stop pestering me ... was I wrong.. 2 hours go by and I finally folded and said fine! We’re getting up at 230 so be ready ... again I figured maybe by 230am when I wake her she’ll change her mind... again I was very wrong! She jumped out of bed and was ready before I was! She had my truck running with the heat on!
Anyway we head out at 3am northbound and down! We pulled into datillios and there was darth vador and reelax waiting! After a lil gogo juice for the boat and a fresh 2020 fishn license we were headed for the landing ! We arrived at the landing, loaded up the boat with Aubs, fish dawg and T ! And off we went!! After Jeff threw us a fresh box of Thornys donuts, and for the record are flippn Awsome!!
Anyway we head off in the direction of walons, reelax headed for splitrock I decided to head to the north side of cannon point, got gear set up and trolled for a bit headed south into walons, as soon as we started to turn we had our first release ! Aubs was like a bullet ! She grabbed that rod and started cranking! Boy was she excited! Laker after laker they kept comming... so we decided to go on tour, reelax NY chaos VT , we started at Thompson no bait, headed over th kingsland and bam! Bait after bait , big fish underneath, jackpot! So we set up and trolled all the way around the mansion with solid bait and fish chasing cowbells but no takers! So we headed around diamond and picked away at a few small lakers, at that point we pulled gear and planed out heAded to Westport, again came off plane and bam! There’s bait so I set the first rigger and bam it fired! Another laker! Woohoo! We picked away at at a few more lakers till about 4pm when reelax and I decided it was time to head back to the landing. As skimmed across the lake it felt like we were a couple of
F-35 fighter jets flying in tandem down the lake,
that’s what it made me think of .. loaded up the boats and chewed the fat for prob 45 minutes in the parking lot! We had such a fantastic time! We didn’t wanna leave!
All in all we had a great day and got to know a few more great fishermen
And man did we eat good! O! And Aubs says thank you again Matt for the chocolate! She loved it! We can’t hardly wait for the next trip north, Aubs says I can’t go without her lol! She loves it! All in all great trip hope to see you all out again!!

My typing is bad cause it’s hard typing with my giant sausage fingers

Here are some pics from Jeff and Johns cameras...

Reelax wrote:

tamiron wrote:Great read! What is that orange thing?

I have no idea what it is. Fisherman leave spoons and gear aboard my boat because I won’t take gas money.. that thing was left on the boat this fall by someone... not sure who or where it came from...

It has a great action but is toooo big for salmon... IMHO..

I have three of those spoons. We used them in the late 80’s. The worked best behind a teardrop dodger. They made one that was chartreuse that was very productive

Great-fun report guys! That orange thing ain’t mine!!!!

thanks for your report to john glad you had a great time with your daughter thats what its all about. you guys sure eat alot out there. makes me hungry.