Lake Champlain United - Forums

I fish for memories, stories and adventures… Not Inches and pounds… That is a good thing cause as far as I am concerned from that perspective… we won the derby!

Wow. Strategy, plans and hopes we deployed heavily with a very passionate crew of AveJoe and Esad. These guys are truly hard core, go for broke, don’t give up, fish pull loving maniacs.

We launched day 1 out of Arnold’s bay, 2nd boat in at 530am with high hopes and lots of FOOD and propane:)

Motored to our prescouted grounds to the south and setup with only 2 boats in sight. We were right into the fish and had 4 salmon to the net by 7am.. perfect

We had a banner morning with many fish up to around the 4Lb for salmon and very few lakers. Figuring the low end for a 3 day salmon derby would be over 4 lbs we tossed fish back one after another…

By Mid day we had worked into an area with crazy Ivan and a few other boats. Bite slowed for A short period but picked back up around 1pm. By 330pm we had trolled for 10hrs and figured we better call it a day to keep energy high for day 2 and 3.

On day 2 we decided to launch as north as possible to work south in the north wind and also have some shelter. Hathaway pt St Albans provided great shelter up agains ball island and burton island BUT as soon as you trolled toward better salmon water on Georgia shore you got blown out by 4’ waves… we worked the area next to Fishdawg and Dave Foundry each testing the big water and wind many times during the day and each comming back to ball with tails tucked after a few miles of Gail force battles.. wow.I Only on lake during derbies when it is like that. So windy we had to bring the magma indoors to cook the ribeyes for lunch:) Some waves stacked and we saw 5’ waves on our last trip back to ball:( we were not giving up skunked so at 2pm when the crew netted our ONLY salmon of the day around it felt like we had won the derby:) we had to make a daring run to Ladd point just to put that thing in the boat! We paid dearly on the way back:(

Well day 1.. 10hrs, 28miles on water and day 2 10 more hrs of trolling and 22 BUMPY miles on water…

Where do we go from here… CONVERSE.

With the north blow continuing we hoped to get shelter along the Ny side from splitrock south. This plan worked great. We fought fish, landed pigs, bbqed meals and talked about all the fun we had had over the lay 2 days. By the time we hit snakes den we were tired and fished right around into Westport putting salmon in the net the whole way… the issue was that at this point was 11am and the whole lake had blown up. We had a run back to converse that was not gonna be fun… we picked just before
Noon and began the nose up trip into the 4 footers north to converse.. like a guardian angle we hear cowboy on the Cathy Jean Coming out of the south after weighing a pig salmon in port Henry… after radio contact we fall in behind the bigger vessel for the long hard trip up the lake. We saved over 45min and 5gal of gas using Thorny’s clean path up the lake to get home right behind him:)

Thanks guys!!!!!

Water temps were heavily effected by seige effect. Up at ball it was 54-52 surface- all the way down:( down south we saw up to 64 surface with good temps down at 20 ish. There was much more variation in between. We caught salmon from 11 down to 45 down depending on time of day and location. The lake is pretty mixed up right now due to the hard blow. Gonna wait a while for it to settle before next trip.

Honorable mention the the 2023 crew… Never once did spirit drop. Hard to believe you had the energy to change out the whole spread on Sat after no bites for hrs… Pushing the end out to try to get that last bite when we knew we had an hr+ of back breaking wave hoping bucking bronco ride back to converse.

I had to pull everything out if the boat and leave it on the lawn today to dry like a wet seagull today. Nothing
Like a good champlain soaking to clean out the boat:)

26hrs of trolling didn’t even phase this crew….. THANKS guys for the great times, stories, and the adventure!

Fish on..

What a rodeo, great to see you guys in action again. Serious blow out there Matt, looks like 70+ mph to me?!?! Great memories were surely made. Be back soon for redemption I'm sure as will Team Controlled Chaos

Sounds like quite a team! Good to see you guys out there! We certainly got some action in fishing on angry seas. I hope my next outing is on calmer water, but the salmon do seem to be around.

Great report, guys! Way to tough it out. At least you had fun and ate good ... but I would expect nothing less.

The "DEAD SEA" sure has reared it's ugly head this year. I fished Cowbanks (the whole corner from Paradise to the bridge) for 4hrs last Thursday evening and never moved a rod! That's usually the place to be this time of year.

The Reelax team did not relax much during the weekend. As always, lots of action on that boat, and great food.
Thanks for sharing.

Awesome report as only you could write! I just made a mental note to not read any of your posts until after dinner because every time I see the floating buffet you put on my stomach starts growling!

Love the report and the pictures. That was hard-core trolling in the wind and waves over the weekend !