Although there is still fishable ice on several ponds and lakes that I frequent, knowing that Lake Champlain was only a day away or so from blowing out, it wasn’t a hard decision on where to go. Plus, fishing with company beats fishing late ice alone! If I had been out alone in similar conditions there is a good chance I would have gone home real quick! We experienced sun, clouds, rain, sleet, and wind. Not ideal conditions for fishing!
I met up with a buddy in Richmond to carpool at 5:30am. We were at the spot by 6:30 and fishing shortly after. The fishing started fairly quick with a mix of mostly pumpkinseed and bluegill but there were a few keeper crappie mixed in! It didn’t take long for disappointment to kick in… The fishing slowed quickly. I wouldn’t say they shut off but you would have been hard-pressed to catch more than 2-3 out of a single hole that held fish. It seemed like they learned quick what not to eat! I ended up switching just a lot looking for what was working. The best combo I found all day was an orange vertical jig tipped with three spikes.
Throughout the day, we made two big moves from the starting point. The first was north towards a swamp thinking that they were staging up for the spawn. At first the move seemed good. We caught fish after fish for about 30 minutes but the glory was short lived. The fish disappeared and were no where to be found. We returned to the starting point and being that it was around 2pm, we decided to make another move back towards the car.
On the way over to the last spot, I checked every hole that was open with my Aqua Vu
underwater camera. I only saw two fish. Both northerns! I figured we were going home early… My buddy and I talked about where or if we should make another series of holes. It was a good thing we did because we found decent fish! We punched six holes total. I checked two holes and in the third I think our conversation went something like “any fish?” and my response was “umm… yup. a few pumpkinseed. I mean a lot of seeds… and a ton of bluegill, and bass, and CRAAPPPIIIEEE! Get your vex and jig stick!” Wouldn’t you know it, first drop, my buddy pulls a thick 12″ crappie!
We fished for another two hours and punched lots of holes that yielded lots of fish. It was a good end to a day that threw us quite a few curve balls. We worked hard for our fish and as we punched the last of our holes you could see that the ice was very close to being done. We were pulling out huge chunks of shattered ice coming from the bottom layer and kicking off an easy 5″ of honeycombed ice on top. With a total of 10″ of ice that didn’t leave much room for quality ice between.
Lake Champlain was good to me this year. Is it December yet! I miss it already!
D & B Ice Adventures 