Lake Champlain United - Forums

With F&W saying fishing was allowed, and a successful muff startup of the boat last weekend, decided to head to the lake yesterday.

We launched at 7:30, crew of myself, my buddies Vinny, and Steve. Social distancing protocol had us topless, and sitting apart, but the 8ft beam made the 6 ft rule doable.

We started out by hoping on plane and heading to first point. First task was all new leaders on the rods. We started with a shallow program 2 riggers 5-8, leads of 2 color, and a 1 color, a flat line with a sinker and a small pin minnow.

By the time we had gear in and the trolling motor on, it was around 8:30. We trolled in toward the west shore of the bay, near the shipyard and started south. Just below the island a lead core fires, I grab the rod and fish on. It felt like dead weight and no head shakes, I immediately said pike. And sure enough we bring in a slim 29 inch northern.

We troll around the point and through the minefield of moorings on the south side. We troll around the south end of the bay and head up the east side water is between 35 and 36.4, nothing wants to play. We switch all the lures out and keep at it. We troll all the way out of the bay with no action.

Outside the bay there is one boat in the basin between the 2 shoals, I decide to drop off the ledge to see what’s out there, and it’s a constant bait cloud. We decide the shallow program has had its time, and we might as well toss some lakers in the boat since we were approaching mid day. We cross the basin and come to shelburne shoal, as we pass the norther red can, the outside lead with a dodger fly fires. Steve grabs the rod and starts bringing it in. We get the board off and a couple seconds later the inside board fires, doubles! Vinny grabs that and then Steve loses his, but Vinny fish is just pulling drag, it must be big. Then it surfaces in the distance, a laker hooked right in the tail. Get it most of the way to the boat and then it pulls the hook. Looked like a 10+lb fish from what we saw.

We kept trolling enjoying the calm weather with no real plan we crossed the shoal, caught 2 small lakers circled back and grabbed a couple more. Decided to head to the hump via juniper, and found fish both places.

Trolled back south into the bay, and called it quits at 4:30.

We went 8/18 with 7 lakers and a pike. All but one laker came on the same spoon. Thought about really setting more than 2 lines down for them but left 4 high up just to see what else may hit.

Awesome you guys did well! Thanks for the report.

Glad to see this post. Wondered about your hard water fishing because you haven't posted about this. Or maybe I missed a post or two.

Hardwater didn’t go our way this year. No real nice fish, and the weather wouldn’t cooperate. Still got the hardside our on 4 lakes, and fished 3 new lakes, but not much to show for it. The snow and warm really screwed things up, seemed we would go from 50 and rain all week, to 6 inches of snow every Thursday and then brutal cold each weekend. Never got clean ice to allow the cold to do work. Most lakes were lasagna ice, with snow on slush on ice on slush on ice on slush on a final layer of mediocre ice. Hopefully next year brings better ice! We did however succeed the first time ever in open water fishing one weekend ice fishing the next and then the reverse this spring where we were on ice last weekend and boat this weekend.

Ice fishing wasn't so hot for me either.
You've really got those lakers dialed in!
Are there salmon in Shelburne? I've kind of given up trying, myself. It seems like they've been absent for a few years. But I think I remember a couple reports from last year that seemed promising.

We had a few decent trips last year for them. Seems they show up in early May, but we caught them all the way until LCI last year in the bay with consistency. Never a lot, couple a day, but there were some hot days. Last one we caught was first day of the LCI last year the blow that day turned the bay over and the fish left the bay overnight it seemed, never to appear again.

Nice report Keith. Thanks!

keithm87 wrote:We had a few decent trips last year for them. Seems they show up in early May, but we caught them all the way until LCI last year in the bay with consistency. Never a lot, couple a day, but there were some hot days. Last one we caught was first day of the LCI last year the blow that day turned the bay over and the fish left the bay overnight it seemed, never to appear again.

I thought I remembered something like that from your reports. I can never seem to get salmon in that bay. Part of the difficulty is that it's such a big bay for a kayak. I'll give it another try this spring.

The first year I started fishing for them, I remember seeing them bust water in the bay a lot. But not since.