Couple of days on Lake Champlain

So this past weekend my tournament partner Charles Sim and I traveled to the southern part of Lake Champlain. The weather was forecasted to be perfect for targeting shallow pre-spawn largemouth. We launched the boat in what had to be 40km winds from the north and headed south. Originally the plan was to throw crankbaits and jerkbaits on large main lake flats for pre-spawn bass but the wind forced us into smaller bays that were protected from the wind. In one of the bays we fished there was a huge shad spawn happening with hundreds of shad breaking the surface of the water for several hours. We were able to get a couple of bass by throwing spinnerbaits into the spawning shad but the numbers we were not what we were looking for. While in the same bay we noticed cruising bass up shallow and started targeting them. I ended up getting a dozen or so largemouth by throwing a 4" Berkley Chigger Craw (Green Pumpkin) weighted with a 1/2 oz Green Pumpkin Ultra Tungsten weight. Line of choice was Berkley Fire Line Braid (50#) rigged on a 6'10" Fenwick Elite Tech Smallmouth series paired with an Abu Garcia Revo MGX. This combo was perfect for these bass! Saturday night we decided that we would wake up early and make the 90 minute drive north to Plattsburg NY. We Launched in the Chazy River and started to fish sparse weed clumps near likely spawning areas. The water temperature was almost 10 degrees cooler than the south end of the lake so we decided to throw jerkbaits allowing really long pauses between twitches. We landed a few decent fish this way and then Charles got a monster (5 12oz) largemouth. After landing that fish we decided that the jerkbait was going to be the pattern for the day. We went on to catch about 40 more fish that day. The trip was a lot of fun and was a good chance to try out all of the new gear I picked up over the winter. I'm planning to head back up to the north end of Lake Champlain again next week for a day or two. I'm thinking the fishing will be even better with the nice weather we've been experiencing lately. I'll post the results of that trip along with some pictures. Thanks for reading, Nigel Touhey