Last Saturday my Dad and I headed up north on Champlain to the White Perch Capital of VT, St. Albans Bay. As always, my day started with a waking tap on the shoulder and a "Ready to go catch some fish?" from my Father and I jumped out of bed. We got off to a little bit of a late start due to some problems with our trailer that we discovered after returning from a great day of Salmon fishing Friday (You'll have to request a report from Crayfish2 if you want details on our adventure
). With the boat on the road by 7:15, I was wide awake and ready to go catch some warmwater species by the time we left. When we arrived at the launch I noticed a whole school of Bluegills basking in the sun right on shore with a little largemouth cruising in between them, I was positive that this was a good sign. After a short run away from the launch, we immediately started fishing. The first bait to hit the water for me was a tiny tungsten jig that I managed to catch a couple panfish on before breaking out the big rod and casting stickbaits for bass and pike. Almost right off the bat, I noticed a northern following my bait! I slowed my presentation down to just a couple finesse twitches, but he didn't seem to want anything to do with it after that. I tried everything! Different baits, varied retrieves, but nothing seemed to want to make the commitment. I also noticed two monster LMBs cruising the shallows, but they just swam straight past my favorite jerkbait.
I have to say that it took a while to break the fishless trend that we had started the day with. It seemed like the fish were under some serious angling pressure in this particular area, but without a fishing vessel in sight, this seemed unlikely. After I was fed up with watching fish swim right past my lure, I switched back to my tungsten and boated a dozen or so more sunfish, until I spotted a smallmouth sitting on a bed. Here was my chance to land my first ever bed smallie! We backed off of the bed and I rigged up a Shakey head and a white double-tailed grub that I purchased specifically for bed fishing. On the first cast, she nosed down on it, but ended up missing the hook. Two casts later I had a big Smallmouth on the end of my line! The fish immediately darted straight under the boat and made an unstoppable run towards a log adjacent to her nest! My heart began to race as I struggled to keep her out of the snag. Finally she began to tire and was netted upon her ascent to the surface. The first smallmouth of the day measured in at approximately 18.75 inches! First Bed Smallmouth, CHECK. After removing the hook, we edged the boat right next to her nest as I held the beautiful fish in the water and waited for her to catch her breath. While I wouldn't want to go around taking Bass off of their beds all of the time, it was still fun to catch her! The only other fish that we caught in this area was a little LMB and this was the last straw to make us pack up and move.
When we arrived at one of our favorite spots to fish in the bay, my Dad put on his favorite Bomber and I put on my favorite Storm Wiggle Wart and started working the shallows for some hungry predators. My Dad caught a decent SMB on the second or third cast and that was it for a little while. Trolling the clear water and keeping an eye out for fish laying on bottom, we continued casting a variety of baits. Finally we began to find a concentration of 14ish inch smallies and some big schools of perch. We finally began to catch fish consistently and filling our cooler with yellows. Towards the end of one of my retrieves with a Shadow Rap Deep, I noticed a big smallmouth following a couple feet back. With a drop-shot at the ready on my light rod, I was able to quickly put a Zoom Finesse worm in front of his face. One hit, jig jig jig, two hits, jig jig, BAMMM! I set the hook into the roof of his mouth and the "fight" was on. It almost seemed that this fat smallmouth had used up all of his energy chasing my bait, because he gave up after only one 15 foot run and then came shooting up to the surface. Either way, a hog is a hog.
First Drop-Shot Smallmouth, CHECK!
After chasing around the school of perch to put fresh fish on my Grandfather's table, we decided to go try another spot the we had caught fish in the past. It wasn't very long at all before my Dad had hooked up with the first Northern of the day, with my first northern coming only two casts after landing his fish! I don't remember exactly how many fish we caught in this spot, but I think it was somewhere around 8 or 9 pike between the two of us by the end of the day, but let's not skip the highlight of the entire day for me. After fan casting around one area, we pulled the anchor and drifted out to the weed edge and dropped the anchor again. My Dad made a cast off the Starboard side of the boat and caught another nice smallmouth and I immediately casted to the exact same spot and hooked into something BIG. With long runs and violent headshakes, my adrenaline began to overwhelm my arteries and my legs began to shake. The stunning specimen finally made his way to the surface and that's when I noticed that I had a MONSTER SMB foul hooked in the base of the pectoral fin!! With the bass threatening to make a hook throwing jump, my Dad extended the net and quickly, but carefully, netted the fish once in range!!! While I knew that it was a big fish just by the fight that it put up, I wasn't able to appreciate the sheer size of the 19.5 inch Smallmouth until I hefted it out of the net!
Biggest Smallmouth of the YEAR, CHECK!!!!!!
A special thanks to the net man who made the landing of this fish all possible.
All in all, this was the best day of fishing this year!
Tight Lines to ALL, PB
