August 3rd, 2002. My son Tom and I pull into the parking lot of the South Bay Boat Launch at the southern end of Lake Champlain, on the NY/VT border. It's 6:30AM. We are about to try to cram 18 hours of fishing into the next day and a half. We have both been looking forward to this trip for what seems like way too long. With Tom living in Vermont and me in Connecticut, we don't get to spend nearly as much time fishing together as we'd like. For the past few years, it's probably averaged out to every three weeks or so between June and October. But this year, lots of other things have interfered, and this is our first trip since mid June.
Still, I'd rather fish with my son than with anyone else, and I'd rather fish Champlain than anywhere else, so this had the makings of a really great weekend, assuming we could coerce the fish into cooperating.
Bear in mind as you read this account, that August 3rd and 4th was the weekend of the NY Federation tournament coming out of Ticonderoga, just 25 miles north of South Bay. We were naturally concerned that a lot of prime fishing water would be occupied by contestants.
Bear in mind too, as you click the embedded links and view the pictures, that I'm on the large side. Six-three and 285 or thereabouts at last count. Down from 300 a couple months ago, but even when I'm down to my target weight of 220, you need a different set of scales to measure me and my son, who is about 5-8 and needs to fill his pockets with sinkers to make the needle move past 140. So the fish he catches always look bigger than mine. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. It's his size that makes his fish look so big. It's an optical illusion. Yeah, that's the ticket!
Or maybe not.
Once we got our gear organized, we slid the boat off the trailer and into the murky waters of South Bay at 6:45AM. After parking the car, I joined Tom in the boat and dropped the bow mounted Minnkota Power Drive into the water. I'm without a "big boat" these days, but since I'm not tourney fishing, it doesn't really bother me. The 15 footer is fine, even on a lake the size of Champlain, if you launch right in the area you're going to fish. And the gumption that motor has for moving us into the wind, through weed beds, and across whatever hazards the aquatic environment throws at us never ceases to amaze me. I've never managed to suck even half the life out of a single, well charged, group 27 marine battery with it, even though I consider anything less than 11 or 12 hours on the water a short day.
On this trip, we'll be limited to the lower end of the lake, which is more like fishing a medium sized river than a lake. We don't really expect to get much more than 8 or 10 miles from the mouth of South Bay today.
I start slinging a spinnerbait as I electric as fast as 50 pounds of thrust will move us in the direction of the closest bed of water chestnut, a hundred yards or so from the ramp. With pretty heavy cloud cover, the spinnerbait in open water and scattered milfoil clumps seems a reasonable option. But it proves fruitless, and soon enough, we reach our intended target.
Water Chestnut -- simply 'nut, as we usually refer to it.
If you're not familiar with water chestnut, just imagine the nastiest, toughest-to-fish vegetation on the planet. Also the most productive and most fun, once you've mastered it. The surface and above surface leaves are tough. But it's the mess underneath it that makes it challenging. Air bladders, thick, stringy stems in the upper "crown" portion, the nut itself, and then the "vine" that looks and feels like a big, strong, hairy rope. This is good stuff, from the fish's point of view. But be careful not to let the bow of the boat into the bed unless you've got a really ballsy electric motor, because if it doesn't stop it cold, it'll just shake the motor out of its mount. Luckily the Minnkota PowerDrive on the front of my boat qualifies as more than ballsy enough to handle the 'nut. I never thought I'd say that about a 12 volt motor, but this thing eats chestnut for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
If you're serious about fishing it, dump the mono and spool up with Fireline or the like. Mono strong enough to handle it is too thick to slice the vegetation, so you end up dragging 20 pounds of assorted chestnut plant parts to the boat with most every fish, and you land far fewer of the ones you get a hook in at all.
Our plan is to "flip the 'nut" on our way out of and into South Bay each day. There are some great 'nut beds in the main section of the lower lake, but they are a bit farther north than we expect to get this weekend, so we expect our chestnut fishing will be limited to the South Bay beds. We work the edge of the 'nut bed across the shallow section, to a stretch where deep (10 to 12 foot) water borders the 'nut, where the narrow channel cuts between the north shore 'nut bed and a small island of 'nut. Here I get our first fish of the trip, a solid 3 pounder, flipping a green pumpkin Water Widow.
A hundred feet farther along the deep edge of the 'nut bed, Tom's modified Brush Hog -- also green pumpkin -- gets eaten by fish number 2 of the trip. See what I mean about his fish always looking bigger? It's now 7:45AM.
After working the remaining few hundred feet of 'nut edge to the railroad bridge at the mouth of South Bay, we put down the flipping sticks in favor of medium action rods to cast to the pilings and abutments as we pass under the bridge. No takers, and it's finally time to start the "big engine" (a whopping 20 hp!) to make the 2 or 3 minute "run" to our next spot. This is a spot I call the "feeding zone", because in the years I've been fishing Champlain, I can't recall ever visiting it without finding some bass actively chasing baitfish there.
Guided by plenty of past experience in this specific spot and in the southern end of Lake Champlain in general, we both grab rods rigged with 5-3/4", Golden Shiner Fin-S Fish. It takes about 5 minutes to locate bass chasing baitfish in 5 to 8 feet of water, outside the weeds on this gentle bend in the river, not far south of the South Bay entrance. By 9:30AM, the clouds have long since been replaced by bright sunlight, and our caught fish tally has gone from 2 to 20. A few are little guys in the 1-1/2 pound range, but most are about the size of this one.
When the action here slows, we decide to move a bit farther south and hit some hard stuff. Aside from fishing the 'nut, I believe this is the single most consistently productive pattern on the southern end of Lake Champlain. Basically, it means finding spots where rocks and/or wood pilings extend from the shore or shallows into deeper water. The "deep water" might be anywhere from 4 or 5 feet to 20 feet or more, depending on what's available in the immediate vicinity. There are a lot of long stretches of rip-rap along the railroad tracks on the NY side, but they don't seem to count on this pattern. You're looking for smaller, isolated rocky stretches in areas dominated by vegetation.
Tom threw a Baby Brush Hog. This will be the last time I bother to tell you the color of the plastic bait. It's green pumpkin. With the exception of the Golden Shiner colored Fin-S Fish already mentioned, all our bass on this trip came on green pumpkin colored soft plastic lures, most of which would fit into the "creature bait" category. Anyway, he caught 3 fish feeling around the edge of the rocks in 10 to 14 feet of water, in short order. This was the best one of that group.
Meanwhile, I'd rigged up just the body of a HydroSpider, without the skirt, on a 3/16 oz. Texas rig, and held up my end of the deal with a few fish, including my biggest of the day, caught where a log was wedged up against the end of a stretch of bluff bank that reached into deep water.
It was about 2:30PM when Tom suggested breaking off this pattern and heading back to the 'nut in South Bay. Of course to get there, we had to drive right past the "feeding Zone". Naturally, we stopped to give it a try for a few minutes. A few minutes quickly turned to 2 hours or at least the better part thereof. The fish we were catching weren't really big. Most were under 2 pounds, and we didn't even bother to get out the camera. But I can honestly say I've never seen so many fish so active in one spot for such an extended period of time. I don't know how many we caught, but it was a lot. We caught fish from the top in 10 feet of water out over the channel, and we caught them from 10 inches of water right against the bank, behind the shallow growing eelgrass. All of them came on the Fin-S Fish. Several times, it looked more like fishing for blues when they run bunker onto the bank than fishing for bass feeding on perch and shiners, as the water was boiling with feeding fish.
Shortly before 4:30, with the feeding still going on hot and heavy on that river bend, Tom reminded me that we had to be off the water and on our way to his house by 5:30. Of course the ramp was only a five or 10 minute boat ride away, But we did want to flip some more chestnut for that last hour or so of fishing time, so it was back to South Bay for us. I couldn't resist shutting down the 20 and dropping in the electric for a few casts as we went under the railroad bridge on our way into the bay, and we each caught a bass in the 2-1/2 pound range there. But we didn't stop to expand on that or to see if there might be a bunch of them present, because we had big fish in the 'nut on our minds.
It only took a few minutes before Tom had a big fish in the 'nut on his line, too. Note the hole in the solid 'nut bed in the background. That's what we call "rippage", and it's the result of either pulling a fish out, or of missing one and getting the hook stuck in the nasty stuff, then having to rip a big pile free to get the lure back. In any case, when you see rippage pitch your lure to it. It means something was biting there recently, and experience proves that where there's one under the 'nut, there's usually more. In fact, we sometimes get a double header by flipping to the hole the other guy is still battling a fish through! Tom caught 2 bass and blew another on this pass across the shallow side of the 'nut island, while I blew one and caught what turned out to be the only pike of our trip. That was the only flip into the 'nut I made with a lure that wasn't green pumpkin. Coincidence? I think not!
Back at the boat ramp on time at 5:30, and soon on the road, headed for Tom's house. Eleven hours of fishing time are used up. In the books. Done and gone. Tomorrow will be a short day. But even if we don't get bit but once or twice tomorrow, this will still go down in the logs as a great trip. Nothing over 6, but a couple darn close to it, and more over 3 that you could shake a flipping stick at. And all those NY Fed guys we were so concerned about earlier? We'd seen 3 or 4 of them, but none were fishing anywhere we had designs on, and apparently none had designs on anywhere that we were fishing.
Up early the next morning, as we would have only a half-day to fish. On the way to the lake, we toss around possible game plans. We are looking at classic post frontal conditions. The air temp is 15 degrees cooler than this time yesterday, and all hints of stuffiness have been flushed from the atmosphere. The morning fog wouldn't last long, so we decided to take advantage of it and head to the feeding zone for some topwater style action. It's about 10 minutes past daybreak when we launch the boat at 5:30.
We race (yeah, right. It's a 20, remember?) to the feeding zone, only to find another boat (not a tourney boat) there fishing it. Moving to the end of the stretch as far from the interlopers as possible, we catch a few small fish. But the other boat is just about in the prime position, and we don't see any hook setting going on. We decide to spend some time checking the best of the hard stuff spots from yesterday, in hopes that there might be some chasing going on in the adjacent weedbeds. One fish and nearly a half-hour later, we realize this isn't going to cut it.
We take a ride north, with the intention of trying some of my favorite hard stuff spots on the lake, which happen to be located in the first 8 miles or so north of the mouth of South Bay. But we have to ride past the feeding zone to get there, and when we do, the other boat has left. We pull in on the sweet spot, and grab our Fin-S Fish rods. We each catch a couple, but they are one the small side, and the action certainly isn't fast. I pick up a rod with a light Texas rig set up on it, and rig a Baby Brush Hog. First cast to one of the outermost clumps of vegetation and the lure is immediately eaten. While it was nothing like the previous afternoon's hot and heavy topwater action, the fish were definitely on. They weren't chasing baitfish, but if you had something green pumpkin with some kind of appendages wiggling, and fished it behind a 3/16 or 1/4 oz slip sinker and cast to the outside weed clumps in the feeding zone, it was pretty tough not to get bit every cast or two. Again though, only a couple of the fish we caught off the pattern were better than 2 pounds.
By 9:00AM, we knew that if we hoped to catch some better fish, we had to move to where we'd been heading when the opportunity to fish this spot again proved too attractive to pass up. The lower end of Champlain is, as mentioned earlier, more like a medium size river than a lake. The channel is marked with standard navigation buoys and with permanent "ranges", that most anglers call lighthouses. Each of these ranges stands atop a large concrete base. I've seen lots of anglers throw a spinnerbait or even a jig at the base of these things. But few (other than my fishing partners and I) bother to fish out around them, in deeper water. Those concrete bases aren't just poured atop the mud bottom. They are built on timber and rock "cribs". For the most part, those cribs are silted in. But except on the shallowest of them, bits and pieces of the crib poke through the silt here and there around the "lighthouse" base. Those, and a couple rocky points within 5 miles or so of the mouth of South Bay were our targets for the rest of the morning. No surprise, green pumpkin, Texas rigged plastics would be our weapons of choice.
Our fish count hit 20 while we were on the first of these spots, only about a half hour later than we'd caught and released 20 bass the day before. Admittedly though, we didn't have anywhere near yesterday's size average going. By the time we'd fished a lighthouse and two rock points, that situation had been resolved, as our Water Widows, Hydro Spiders, Hellgies, Baby Brush Hogs and Brush Hogs had produced a total of 10 fish from the 3 stops, with most not too far off the size of this one.
While the area we were fishing still wasn't anything you might call crowded, we were running into more boat traffic from the Federation tourney than we had seen the previous day. We exchanged pleasantries with a few of the boats we encountered, and most claimed to be having having a tough day, which really kind of surprised us. Tom and I each would have had about 15 to 16 pounds in the well if we had been in a tournament. But noon wasn't that far off, and it was time to get out of these guys way, and head back to South Bay for a pass on yet another stretch of 'nut.
This is when our trip went from being merely great, to being incredible. We saw one bass boat in the water chestnut laden outer pond section of South Bay, and it was so hopelessly far back in the thickest 'nut that I wondered if he'd ever get out. We pulled up on my favorite stretch of nut along the south bank of the outer pond and picked up our flipping sticks. Five or ten minutes later, Tom caught a 3 pounder. Then I blew a fish. Then Tom blew a fish. Then Tom got bit off cleanly by a toothy critter, and had to re-rig. Another 10 precious minutes ticked by. It was now quarter past noon. The boat ramp was only a couple minutes away, on the other side of the bay.
Then my son set the hook and the 'nut exploded in a fury of splashing and thrashing. I couldn't tell whether he'd hooked a big northern pike or snagged a muskrat. It turned out to be neither. What it did turn out to be, was within an ounce of 6 pounds, despite being a big headed, skinny fish.
The little boat had gotten dragged more than a couple feet into the 'nut by Tom's hook set and the ensuing struggle. By the time we weighed the fish and I snapped a picture, we were kind of buried in the nasty stuff. I kicked the Minnkota to high to bulldog our way out. My son re-rigged with a new Widow and made another flip, not 5 feet from where he'd just hooked the biggest fish of the trip, and with the motor banging through the 'nut and a trail of "hairy rope" being pulled out from under the bed behind the lower unit. "There's another one!" he groaned through clenched teeth as the butt of the rod hammered his skinny ribs on the hook set. I was just about to slip the digital camera into its case, so I dropped the case, tried to compose a picture on the fly, and fired away.
As skinny as the last one was, this bass was fat. It went six-nine on the Chattilion scale. After releasing the fish, Tom didn't even pick the rod up again. "Ain't gonna spoil the end of this day by trying to get another one," he said. It really was time to go home. Our 18 hours in August had reached its end.
It was more than a good trip. It was a great one. I've fished with many of the big name pros at one time or another, yet deep down I know that my kid's as good a fisherman as I've ever been in a boat with. I guess I'm kind of proud of that. Regardless of how skilled they are though, there's nothing more satisfying than fishing with your own kids or grandkids. Especially when you catch 'em like Tom and I did during those 18 hours in August.
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