What a day on the water! I fished with Bobby & Francois today on a couple of lakes. We started for lake trout & Bobby was the first to hook into a beauty of almost 5 pounds within the first 15 minutes. Into the livewell it went and shortly after, Francois lost one as well. Bobby landed his second trout about the same size and eventually, Francois caught one of his own, too. In only a couple of hours, there were three lakers taken and many other missed hits. By noon we were on Memphremagog for smallmouth bass and Francois was the first to score a real beauty of almost 5 pounds. Both of them were into fish consistently as over 50 bass were to be caught this afternoon. Fin-s tipped jigs were responsible for 100% of the entire day’s catch. With a warming trend finally here, the fish will definately be more active in the day’s to come. The conditions for today were absolutely spectacular! Air temps the mid 70’s with water temps almost 65 degrees in most areas. Sunny skies with no wind made for a very comfortable fishing day. All in all, just a great day to be on the water!!

With light precipitation falling this morning, I decided to try another lake once again. Smallmouth & lake trout were what I was after and it didn’t take long before I was hooked up. The first fish was a smallmouth of over 3 pounds and a lake trout on the very next cast. This time it took a little longer to land the trout as it sounded for deeper water immediately after I hooked it. Light line & a fin-s tipped jig would be responsible for every fish landed today! Water temps were 46 to 48 degrees and air temps topped out at 62 by day’s end. Little to no wind was present and the rain stopped by 10:30 AM. I literally had the lake to myself, as there wasn’t another boat in sight! Too bad, as it was an incredible day for the lake trout! By the end of the day I had caught 8 lakers and 6 smallies with the largest being a 7 pound lake trout. Plenty more strikes were had, but unfortunately, not all were hooked up. With the water temps being as cold as they are, it will be a little longer before the bulk of the smallmouth start to move shallower. Right now, the bass and trout seem to be in the same areas, deep water! Warmer air temps and sunshine are in the forecast for the next week and this should really trigger the smallies to feed before their rigorous spawn cycle, soon to come. All in all, a great day for lakers and one will be grilled for dinner tonight!

Another day on another lake with similar results! Air temps reached 52 degrees, as did the surface water. Overcast skies soon gave way to light drizzle, followed by steady rain. I fished for about 5 hours until I had had enough moisture to soak a sponge. Close to 30 smallmouth bass were caught up to 4.5 pounds. Shallow water as well as deeper edges accounted for today’s catch, as all areas held fish! The conditions need to change before the bulk of the bass begin to leave the deep water and start to feed. Most of the fish being caught are the smaller males, but occasional females are also being landed. Within the next week or so, a noticeable difference will occur with mostly larger females being caught. All in all, a pretty good day!

I spent about 4 hours fishing Lake Memphremagog this afternoon for smallmouth bass. With the special « Catch & Release » season that Vermont has to offer, the fishing starts early for me. The air temps were in the upper 60’s and the water temps were almost 52 degrees. Light & variable winds soon became stronger and by mid afternoon were blowing at 10 to 15 knots from the NW. An occasional sunny period broke through the cloud cover making the air temps seem more like June, rather than May 1st. To say these fish were sluggish would have been an understatement! By slowly dragging jigs, I was able to pick up about 15 bass in the first area I fished. The first bass came on a jerk-bait and it was another 2 hours before I had a fish hit it again. The most productive areas were the open water shoals that led to deeper water today. Their metabolism is still in the winter mode as they feel more like ice cubes when being released. I picked up another 10 or so smallies up to 4 pounds on jerk-baits fishing open water, totaling the afternoon at about 25 bass, 3 huge perch and 2 chain pickeral. All in all a good afternoon for 4 hours of fishing on my first day out!

After a 2-day rest from fishing due to minor motor adjustments, I was back on the water once more for Ouananiche Salmon. My wife, Christiane & I headed to Lake Champlain with great expectations! Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite what we anticipated as we were soon to find out. The weather had changed, but not for the better with air temps only hitting 50 degrees and water temps dropping over 5 degrees since the last trip two days earlier. Cloud cover hung over our heads all day long with winds from the S/E at 15 knots and occasional heavier gusts. The weekend boat traffic was also unbelievable with people everywhere! It was difficult to troll any one specific area with boats constantly in your way, but I managed nevertheless! About 5 minutes into our troll one of the rods screamed for a brief instant, but immediately went silent. I hate when they short strike! Not long after, another rod fired and we were into our first fish of the day. A small brown trout was soon landed and immediately released. We continued trolling the areas that had produced so well on the last trips for quite a while before I realized, it just wasn’t happening. I began searching deeper water for baitfish and fish markings with my electronics and once I found what I was looking for, set the lines out again. Rods began firing almost immediately, but it seemed like all the fish were on the smaller side and we just released them. Several more short strikes got our attention but they just kept getting off! This was to be the day of the short fish, I thought! Due to the excessive amount of boats occupying all the best areas, I decided to get away and try deeper water. We were able to cover many different depth levels with the set up I had and one of the lines was running as deep as 10 to 12 feet. Finally, the deep line fired and produced a decent Salmon. A little later it fired again and another fish came aboard only to be ¼ inch too short. Back in it went once more! I finally managed to locate a concentration of both bait and fish over 25 feet of water near the end of the day. We managed to get into 4 more salmon in less than an hour with 3 of them going into the livwell. More browns and a couple of short salmon later, we called it a day. The winds had increased and the weather looked dismal, so we knew the rain was soon to follow. Back at the boat ramp I spoke to a couple of people and found out they scored a big zero for the day! I really hadn’t seen very many fish hooked or landed amongst all the boat traffic and knew we had probably done better once more. I only wish I had made the move earlier and brought the numbers up a little higher. The final head count was 7 browns and 6 salmon landed with at least twice that much in short strikes. A potential 30 fish day might have occurred if it was a perfect world! Unfortunately that’s fishing and not catching! Still, a good day was had and nobody got hurt!!! With about a week left for me to fish Champlain this spring before I head to Derby and concentrate on lake Memphremagog, I strongly urge anyone interested to give me a call! Once the weather changes and the sun comes out again, these fish will definitely be back on fire! Worst-case scenario, I have to concentrate back in deep water once more to have multiple hookups and amazing “Niche” fishing days!