Champlain Elite Series

It was a tough tournament for me. I was on 2-pounders, and that's not a good thing here.

I was keying on smallmouth, and I had a couple areas that had some big ones. On the first day I didn't get any, even though a lot of guys around me caught them. Today I caught a few nice ones, but they weren't enough.

I fished mostly with a Lucky Craft Pointer and a dropshot Yamamoto Senko. I just needed a couple more of the better ones to bite.

Obviously, the key here was largemouths. I just never got any quality fish out of my largemouth areas in practice.

Day 1: Three bass, 5-01

Can you say stink it up? Well, that’s what I did today. Tough and frustrating would be far better words to describe how things went.

My first cast this morning I lost a 3-pound smallie at the boat on a dropshot Yamamoto Kut Tail worm. For some reason it just pulled off. Well, it was early and I wasn’t too concerned, so I kept on fishing. My non-boater lost a 3 1/2-pounder at the boat on a bright chartreuse tube bait. The fish should have gone in the box, but he could not seem to get a good hold of it.

When we launched this morning the wind was howling – about 22 mph, which made trying to fish 6-pound fluorocarbon and a 1/4-ounce weight in 35 feet of water in 4-foot rollers seem impossible. Boat positioning is everything. At the beginning of the season everybody laughed at me for getting the 52-inch shaft on my Minnkota Maxxum Pro trolling motor. They called me the walleye boat. Well, today I was the one laughing at them when my motor was staying in the water controlling the boat while their motors were chopping it up.

I kept moving around a lot, nervously. I wasn’t comfortable with not putting the fish in the boat. Finally, late in the afternoon, I pulled up on this one shoal out in the middle of the lake and was dragging a tube bait and somehow on earth I managed to jump off four nice-sized smallmouth bass. I was and still am disgusted with my horrible execution. I’m around some nice fish though, as my non-boater managed to catch 2 giant smallmouths for 8 pounds.

Tomorrow is a different day though, and in a way a lot of pressure is off because I’m so far down the points in this event. On the other hand, a guy really wants to bust them good. My confidence is super-low right now and today was just one of those days where things went wrong. God willing, I can put some good weight in the boat tomorrow.

Day 2: Five bass, 8-14 – 100th place

Today my GPS and fishfinder went out first thing in the morning. It was not Lowrance’s fault, it was my own. The last two mornings have greeted us with 3- to 4-foot waves and I somehow had a faulty wiring connection, leading my units to short out. Fishing with out my electronics is like fishing blind to me – it’s amazing how much we rely on those machines. With that being said, I was not able to locate my underwater humps to continue on the chase for the smallmouth.

Instead I focused on largemouth bass in shallow weedy areas in bays. My whole goal was to stay out of everybody’s way, being that I did not largemouth fish yesterday – I did not want to jump anybody’s water. I don’t know what to say, my fishing and execution is horrible right now and I have no choice but to keep fishing and to try to fish out of my slump.

Tomorrow Rebecca and I will travel to North Carolina and drop my Triton off with our good buddy Dustin Wilks, then off to Vegas for the ICAST show to work for KeelShield and Lowrance. It will be good to visit with sponsors and outdoor writers. Unitl next time, be safe on the water, and great fishing!

This place has been tough on me. I have always heard of Champlain as one of the best fisheries in the world. I’m pretty sure that most of the fish here are post-spawn. The main lake water temp is 72 degrees with extremely clear water and the fish seem to be finicky.

I have been catching a few smallmouth bass on tubes and dropshots in 16-35 feet of water. The bite is pretty light for me, with only a few quality fish each day in the 2- to 3-pound class.

I’m sure these guys are finding and whacking them pretty good. I guess that they really stack up here and most of them are the same size as the one you caught earlier. Although a few people are crying the blues, these guys are going to bust them in a big way.

This lake is known for taking at least 15 pounds per day just to get a check. Awesome fishery at times – hopefully my time is coming

For me, the fishing's a lot tougher now than it was 3 weeks ago. They've gone post-spawn and the size of the fish I'm catching has decreased. I'm seeing all 2 1/2- to 3-pounders.

I couldn't catch any big largemouths, so I'm keying on smallmouths. I've seen a few schools with big ones, but they're few and far between.

Probably a third of the field will go south and try to get a big bag of largemouths. I've chosen not to try that. It's supposed to be sunny for the next few days, so maybe the smallmouth bite will pick up.