Today, I had the pleasure of fishing with Jay & Max on lake Champlain in Mississquoi Bay. I had high expectations, having been there several times in the last week with great success. Unfortunately, the last two days had provided us with heavy winds and even heavier rain. The water temps had dropped from over 70 degrees on Saturday to 63 degrees today. The winds were from the N/NW at 5 to 10 knots in the morning and switched to a west 15 by afternoon. Cloudy skies soon gave way to sunshine, early in the morning with the air temps reaching 65 by late in the day. The aggressive, spinnerbait fish that I had been seeing had almost all but disappeared. Jay & Max did manage to catch about 10 smallmouth up to 4 pounds throwing these, but they weren’t very active. With the sudden drop in water temperature, I decided to get them into a slower presentation with tube baits. This was definitely a better choice as they began catching many more bass in the next few hours. We stuck with tubes for the remainder of the day and by doing so, increased the catch to over 40 bass by the days end. One last stop on an area I had not fished this season proved to be a great choice as both Jay & Max got into some of the best fish of the day. They caught about another dozen bass up to 4 pounds with the majority of them being over 3 pounds. A tough day of fishing, but by making these adjustments, a productive one!

Another day with Troy on Lake Champlain today, but this time the wind was there! We started with waves of about and ended with 4 footers. Temperatures went into the 80’s by afternoon making for a beautiful, fall day. We started dragging Carolina Rigs in about 12 feet of water and caught a few small smallmouth up to 2.5 pounds. I slowly moved out until I found some better fish in the 23 to 3 foot depth. We didn’t catch too many, but they were from 3.5 pounds up to 5 pounds. The larger fish were definitely in the deeper water in this area. We tried plenty of other areas and caught a few fish in just about every place we fished. When the waves got too bad to hold in any one area, I threw out a couple of drift socks and we drifted a long shoal and caught several more bass. By 5:00 we had had enough and headed back to the boat ramp in 4 to 5 foot waves. Another day with about 15 or so bass caught and several others lost. It was another tough bite, considering that we should be in a full fall feeding frenzy by now. I can’t wait for cooler weather!

I fished with Troy again today, but this time we headed to Lake Champlain. Flat calm conditions and lack of wind was nice to see on the lake this morning! Usually the lake blows 4 out of 5 days, but we had light & variable winds today. Water temps were in the low 70’s and the air temps reached almost 85 degrees by the end of the day. Several smallies up to 4 pounds were caught on tubes in the first spot and a few pike also took jerk-baits when thrown to the weeds. We caught fish in water as shallow as 5 feet up to 30 feet deep. Everything from Jerk-Baits to Carolina Rigs were thrown as we covered plenty of water looking for schooling fish. Only a few fish were taken from each place we fished, but no serious schools were found. The water is still too warm for the fish to concentrate heavily as of yet. More cool nights allowing the water temperatures to drop into the 60’s will group these fish up making for a great spinner-bait & jerk-bait bite. By the end of the day, we had caught about the same as yesterday and lost plenty more smallmouth bass as well. Another slow day!

I had the pleasure of fishing with Troy from Kansas today on Lake St-Francis for smallmouth bass. The day started with heavy fog and a light drizzle. The humidity was incredible but the air was a cool 70 degrees. We had to run by GPS to our first spot, due to the lack of visibility. Several smallmouth up to 3.5 pounds were caught on Jerk-Baits, spinnerbaits and tube jigs, but the fish were very inactive. Water temps were in the low 70,s and the wind was non-existent making for easy fishing in open water. Once the fog finally lifted, we were able to change locations and cover some water. The fishing was quite slow in other areas and it wasn’t long before we were back in the original starting area covering more water. Plenty of bass were seen and some of them wren actually takers, but it was very slow throughout the day. Jerk-baits accounted for the bulk of the fish today as we threw them most of the time in search of active fish. About 15 bass were caught up about 4 pounds from weeds, rocks and sandy areas today. All in all, a slower day than expected!

I headed out to Lake Ontario with Rick once again this long weekend. My wife, Christiane also joined us on this, tail end of Hurricane Katrina. To say we had wind would be an understatement! All of Saturday’s fishing and most of Sunday was a total wash as we were unable to get onto the water until after 3:00 PM on the second day. Six-foot waves were the norm and winds were from the N/W at 25 knots with stronger gusts. By the time we did finally wet a line, we were fishing in 2 to 3 footers and happy to be there. In about three hours we landed 2 salmon up to 25 pounds and missed three others do to various “Technical Malfunctions”. Monday morning had the makings of a great day as the lake layed down to flat calm conditions. Unfortunately, this was to be our shortest day as we were to be heading home early afternoon. The air temperatures were definitely cooler than the norm with 50 degrees and lots of condensation. The first fish hit less than 5 minutes into our troll and Christiane soon landed another King Salmon around 25 pounds. The second fish hit about ten minutes later and we soon had two salmon “In The Box”, as they say! It took quite a while to get the third salmon on as we had a few missed hits and releases. Rick landed the last one and we ended the morning with one apiece. It’s really too bad this day had to end, because it had the makings of a double-digit day! Once again, “Mother Nature” tried her best to mess up a perfectly good, long weekend! Better luck next time!