Bobby and I trailered his boat to the Lake Champlain today and were fishing by 8am. The weather has turned and we were no longer spoiled by temps in the mid 70’s. Damn! Today was in the mid 40’s with a slight breeze but fortunately no rain while on the water. I guess this is more like normal spring weather conditions as we both did our fair share of shivering! Its funny to think that only a few weeks ago we were trudging around on the ice happy as can be in single digit temps, not the slightest bit phased by the cold!
The fishing was slow but we still managed fish. The water temperatures we experienced today ranged from 46 to 56 and that was just in one bay. Other places fit within the spread. It seemed like we were in pockets that contained only smaller crappie and largemouth bass. I think that the cooler temps either shut the larger fish down a bit or pushed them out to different structure.
The surface of the water was active all day by larger fish chasing bait. Everywhere we looked made the slow bite even more frustrating! Throughout the day we changed our bobber height but found that when we got too deep we picked up green slime and no fish. The best depth of the day seemed to be between 10 and 15″. In that depth range we picked up lots of gills, seeds, bass, and short crappie. Catching some fish is better than no fish! We called it an early day and headed back to the boat launch around 2:30pm.
We messed around with plastic colors today. The best producing color was a smoke with black flake Mister Twister. The jig head color didn’t seem to matter much as I tried bright, dark, silver and gold with similar results with all selections.
After packing up the boat we took a few casts from shore to see if we should have stayed closer. The gills were on fire and I got three crappies that were 8-9″ in maybe 20 minutes. Just goes to show that this time of year it is possible to be effective even if you don’t have a boat.
D & B Ice Adventures 