Living the Dream: Lake Champlain, Part 3
Dave Andrews details the final two days of official practice on Lake Champlain for FLW Series competition
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Editor’s note: This is the third piece in a series of journal entries from Dave Andrews, winner of the 2007 TBF National Championship, detailing his third stop on the 2008 FLW Series Eastern schedule. Entries will be published at FLWOutdoors.com throughout the course of the season. As winner of the “Living the Dream” package, offered by FLW Outdoors through The Bass Federation, Andrews had his entry fees paid to test his club skills on the pro tour with the use of a fully wrapped boat and tow package. Andrews will chronicle his adventure in pro bass fishing, having most recently competed on New York’s Lake Champlain. After Andrews has submitted his journal following each FLW Series event, segments will be posted approximately weekly. (Read Part 1 and Part 2)(Read his Wheeler Lake journal; this links to the final entry, which provides links at the top for each preceding part)
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Walmart FLW Series BP Eastern Division
Stop No. 3: Lake Champlain
Sept. 10-13, 2008
Official practice
Sept. 7
The day dawned cloudy, cool and breezy. It would rain off and on all day today. It was the third practice day, and I was starting to get nervous about my lack of a solid smallmouth pattern. The water temperature was in the 72- to 75-degree range, and that is about as warm as it gets all summer up here. The lack of cool nights leading up to the tournament had kept the smallmouth from ganging up and heading shallow.
Still, I felt like I needed to check some of my old favorite shorelines in the Inland Sea to see if the smallies had moved up on those spots. I also wanted to spend some time in deeper water looking for the summer-pattern smallmouth that should have been holding near bait pods. I made an effort to stay pretty close to Plattsburg, as I was hoping to find fish that I could get to in case the weather turned bad, which I knew it would.
Scott and I launched above Plattsburg and were on the water just after dawn. The wind was cranking as we headed north toward a small bay that I had looked at in one of my prepractice trips. The bay was a little out-of-the-way spot that had a good weedline in 10 to 12 feet of water and was loaded with baitfish in August. The spot was protected from the punishing northwest winds, and Scott and I went to work with spinnerbaits, burning them across the surface. Quickly, Scott boated a 2-pound smallmouth, but that would be it for this spot. We worked the weedline in 12 feet and then made another pass out deeper. The bait was still scattered along the drop, but it was clear to me that the smallmouths had not moved into this area.
We headed back south and pulled into a larger bay. This was one of those areas that “looked good on the map,” and I’d always wanted to fish it. It featured a mix of rock and scattered weeds, and we fished through it fast by burning white-bladed, double willow-leaf spinnerbaits. Not long after stopping here, my rod bent double, but when the fish didn’t immediately jump, I knew it wasn’t a smallmouth. Indeed, a few moments later a big northern pike emerged alongside the boat. After subduing the beast, I rinsed my bleeding hand, bent my spinnerbait back into shape, wiped the slime from my hands, washed the fish blood off the carpet and went back to fishing. Ten minutes later we discharged our fifth and final 8- to 10-pound pike from this spot. Sure enough, it looked better on the map.
Next up was a big largemouth bay where I had caught plenty of bass in years past by flippin’ various soft plastics into the milfoil patches. Scott and I battled the wind in here and only managed a few largemouths up to 2 1/2 pounds. The harsh winds and cloud cover were simply not conducive to this style of fishing.
For the next few hours we ran around checking a mixture of shallow and deep spots, whatever the wind would allow us to do. On one main-lake hump, we boated three decent smallmouths on Carolina-rigged Brush Hogs, but these fish were small, maybe 2 to 2 1/2 pounds and not what I was looking for. Morning turned into afternoon in a hurry, and we had not covered near the amount of water that I was hoping to look at. Anxious to find some fish, I bypassed some spots and made a long run to a shoreline that had held good, shallow smallmouths in the past.
Scott and I worked spinnerbaits along the breakline where rock and scattered grass were the primary features. We boated a handful of really small keepers and soon decided to move out deeper. We drop-shotted and Carolina rigged in 20 to 25 feet of water and found some bigger fish holding out deeper in 
the scattered grass. Our best spot produced six or seven 2- to 2 1/2-pound smallmouths and a lone 3-pound largemouth. Yellow perch would peck on our baits constantly, but we would simply ignore them. Then the pecking would stop, and the rod would load up with the take of a solid fish. I punched the GPS coordinates into my Lowrance and figured I would probably use this spot at some point during the event, but it still wasn’t really what I was hoping to find on this stretch.
Late in the evening, we were working our way back toward the launch when we came upon a flock of seagulls diving over bait balls in 40 to 45 feet of water. We stopped, graphed around and soon found piles of smelt all over the water column. We looked for bigger arches on the graph, but never really found any. Eventually we settled on a school of medium sized fish that were working through the smelt. We both dropped down and instantly hooked up with big white perch. The school was huge, and after boating several, we were forced to leave the area. If there were any smallmouths around, the white perch would not let us get to them. We fished until dark again – another 13-hour workday without really much to show for it.
Sept. 8
The final practice day would feature the best weather of the trip so far. It was mainly sunny with passing clouds and seasonable temperatures. I had a decision to make. I was thinking of heading back up north to Missisquoi Bay and working over the largemouth spots that I had found in prepractice. But I couldn’t help the feeling that smallmouth bass would win this event and be the dominant species in the top finishers’ bags. Besides, I’m more comfortable fishing for them on Lake Champlain. I decided to launch out of Plattsburg and head south in the morning. The goal was to re-check the small bay where we had caught some good smallmouths on the second practice day and to look around in this part of the lake for some backup spots.
The wind in the morning was generally light, maybe 10 mph from the south. We quickly chewed up some miles and found ourselves in one of the larger bays on the Vermont side of the lake. We fished deep with Carolina-rigged lizards and shallow with spinnerbaits, but only managed a few keepers.
By 10 a.m. I had seen enough, and we made a rather long run several miles farther south. We pulled up into the area where we had previously had some fish and began working spinnerbaits fast across the surface. The sun was getting high in the sky and the conditions were near perfect. It didn’t take long and I had a solid fish boil on my blade. It missed, but a few casts later I had another hit, and this fish inhaled my spinnerbait. I boated the fish, and Scott snapped a quick photo. It was a solid 4-pound smallmouth bass. We left the area alone and worked farther down the bank. A few more keepers bit our spinnerbaits, and a nice keeper grabbed a jerkbait along a rocky stretch of shoreline. I was feeling pretty good about this area and decided we should head back north while we still had some time left on t
he clock.
We drove the Ranger back toward Plattsburg through a moderate chop with a few big rollers mixed in. When we got back to the launch, I noticed that my console graph wasn’t functioning properly. It just gave a weak signal and had trouble finding the bottom. I didn’t have the time to mess with it now; I’d deal with it on Tuesday, the off day. Scott and I pulled the boat out and headed north, trailering up to a launch on the New York side of the lake. We relaunched at 5 p.m. and drove several miles farther north to check out a bay that I hadn’t looked at yet.
When we left Plattsburg, a major thunderstorm was heading for that part of the lake. We outran that storm, but more dark skies were heading straight for us. We fished fast with spinnerbaits and jerkbaits, but never had a bite in the shallow grass we were fishing. Again, we dodged the worst of the storm by running several miles south, but found ourselves with no trolling-motor battery and fast approaching darkness as well.
Desperate or bored, Scott picked up a rod I had rigged with a Lucky Craft crankbait I had bought prior to coming up and chucked out a cast. The rod loaded up and a huge smallmouth immediately broke the surface. He flipped it into the boat, and we both admired the 4 1/2-pound fish. Once released, he fired another cast and again the rod bent double. This smallie was also over 4 pounds. No dummy, I informed him that since it was my rod and my $16 crankbait that I was taking them both back, effective immediately. No kidding, my very first cast with the crankbait resulted in a 5-pound-plus smallmouth. I unhooked the fish, and that was the last cast we would make during the practice period. It was fully dark when we loaded the boat on the trailer and after 10 p.m. when we got back to our cabin. We could sleep in on Tuesday, as it was a mandatory no-fishing day.
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Editor’s note: Stay tuned for Part 4 of Andrews’ adventure on Lake Champlain in which he’ll write about the off-limits preparation day before his FLW Series tourney at Lake Champlain.
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