Finding Warmer Water

I decided to give Lake Champlain another try today and headed there with Christiane, once again. Overcast skies and winds from the S/E at 10 to 20 knots were what we were faced with for most of the morning. Periodically the sun popped through a hole in the clouds and changed the air temperature, but only for a brief moment. The water temps had dropped drastically since last weekend and were no longer around 47 degrees. At best, I was able to find 43.5 degrees and the fish were gone too. I trolled all over looking for some warmer water but wasn’t able to find anything better. I did however manage to locate bait in deeper water and amongst them were a few fishhooks as well. With a couple of deeper running fly lines, I was sure we would be able to scratch up a few bites and worked them over for quite a while. All of a sudden when the sun came out, one of the reels fired and then went silent. I hate short strikes! Moments later with the aid of the sun, the long line went off and we were finally into our first salmon. The skunk was officially gone as I slid the net under the salmon and released it into my livewell! We worked this area for a long time afterwards without any success and I decided to relocate. I began trolling over 20 to 30 feet of water when I found 45.5 degrees and it didn’t take long before one of the deep lines went off and another fish was on. I realized that without the aid of the sun, I was going to stay deep and continued trolling this depth. We had several hook-ups with only a few fish actually coming to the net. They just weren’t active! When the sun finally came out for good, the fish came alive! I was getting strikes on every rod and fish were finally cooperating. I trolled a deep pattern and swung into the shallower water now & then as well. Every column of water held active fish and we finally had the action we wanted. We were even able to get that bonus brown trout of 3.5 pounds on one of the deep lines late in the afternoon as well. By five o’clock we decided to call it a day and headed back to the ramp. Overall, we managed to land about 10 or 12 fish and lost at least half that many more as well. The hooks just seemed to be pulling out on many of the fish for whatever reason. I think they were short striking the baits and barely getting a hook in their mouths. It may not have been as fast & furious as the weekend before, but it was still a lot of fun!