2008 lake champlain championship stick to the basics

[champlain-champ]

the championship for the league i fish was probably the most succesful outing i have ever had in a tournament... why? because i went back to the basics of fishing.

we started the day out excited because we had about 4 or 5 really hot spots that we were catching fish on consistantly all summer however the conditions were not right and things did not go as planned out of 5 of our spots that we knew were holding big fish we only caught 1 fish that was a keeper.

by noon things were looking pretty depressing so we decided to run up to rouses point and fish the piers next to the canadian line what a surprise when we got there ... atleast 6 or 7 of our club members were already flipping the 500 yard structure and the pressure they were putting on the piers was too much we fished it for 30 minutes finally realizing that the fish didnt stay in the area because of the pressure from all these boats. so what did we do? we kicked back at lunch and came up with a new game plan

the fish were there somewhere all we had to do was locate them.

about 300 yards away from the piers there is a small marina maybe 100 yards in lenght with 5 or 6 slits that have big canadian yachts parked on them and big sail boats. however no one was over there fishing it. we decided that would be a good place to start looking for fish and what a shocker first cast and we threw a nice 4 lbs largemouth in the boat for the next 2 hours it had to be the most incredible fishing experience of my life. within 2 hours we must have caught over 50-60 bass in that marina using a junebug senko rigging it whacky with a weighted tube hook so we could get it down under those yachts. the fish were holding at about 12-13 feet of water they wernt under the docks they were holding at the edge of the slits in the deeper water.

to give you an example of how good the fishing was we were throwing back 4 pounders towards the end.

in those 2 hours we went from having no fish to having the biggest bag of the championship along with the biggest bass of the championship

over 22 pounds

with a 5.8 largemouth

so basically the moral of this story is that when your "hot spots" that usually produce... dont. then go back to the basics fish docks with senko's or go to places that you know have fish and if they are not there. fish the basic area's around them if your fishing a reef and the fish are not on it. go hunting to the area's closest to that reef

[aarogb]

Don't you just love it when a backup plan works?

[Tin]

Same thing here. When I won the Weekend Series on Champlain the guys main smallie spot was out so we just started jumping point to point and my best 5 smallies that day were about 21+. Between the two of us our best 10 went a little over 40 pounds. Nothing like culling 4+ smallies.

[champlain-champ]

tin when do you plan on fishing champlain next? lets hook up and go sometime this summer i can show you some HOT spots in the north branch of the lake.

[Hammer 4]

Way to go Champ..and congratz..I'd love to fish that place sometime..

[thetr20one]

Which series are you fishing there Champ?

[champlain-champ]

adirondack bass association

PM me and i can get you a schedule and rule book etc..

its 20 bucks to be a member and each tourny is 25$ a boat we usually have anywhere from 30-50 boats

and we fish 5 different lakes most of our tourny's are on lake champlain though