Lake Champlain was amazing as usual

[Reel Northern Bass]

Went up to Lake Champlain May 13-16 and finally had a fishing trip hit perfectly for timing. Water temps rose rapidly there, and they were in that perfect prespawn pattern where they were shallow and feasting angrily. Day one video is linked below, we had so many 3.5 - 3.75 lb fish we lost count of those, but we had somewhere around 70-80 fish in the boat at the end of the day, mostly largemouth but plenty of smallmouth from a couple of key spots too. Day two was slower as we gambled making long runs to other areas, the fish were just locking into bed mode so didn't want to play much, only had 30-ish on the day. Day three was insane, we boated 102 bass and best five went 21+ lbs. Fourth and final day we only had a few hours but still managed to put 20 in the boat which made for a grand total of 230+ bass 3 days and change for two people. I still think my ribs are bruised from all the hook sets. The Beast Coast Fishing Open Water (OW) Sniper jig and their Max Feel football jig were the heavy lifters, we easily caught 90% of all of our fish on those two jigs alone. Hope you enjoy the day one video!

[novakevlar]

Your net is awesome.

[paul40269]

I was up there the 12th and 13th and struggled the first day from noon til about 5 (dead calm and hot) until I found a pack of 2-3lb smallmouth roaming the back corner of this bay. They beat up my white spinnerbait for an hour straight. Went back to them the next day and they had a couple of 4lbers mixed in. Have mostly been up in August but May is definitely my new fav. month up there!


Great video! Your camera setup is no joke. I took out my GoPro for the first time and realized quickly what a pain in the ass filming yourself fishing can be.

[Rulebender]

Amazing, I love champlain!

[PaRiverRat]

One of the best fisheries I've ever had the pleasure of fishing

[Reel Northern Bass]

Your net is awesome.

I LOVE that net. Won't buy another one, that telescoping handle makes it great for netting and for keeping it stored.

I was up there the 12th and 13th and struggled the first day from noon til about 5 (dead calm and hot) until I found a pack of 2-3lb smallmouth roaming the back corner of this bay. They beat up my white spinnerbait for an hour straight. Went back to them the next day and they had a couple of 4lbers mixed in. Have mostly been up in August but May is definitely my new fav. month up there!


Great video! Your camera setup is no joke. I took out my GoPro for the first time and realized quickly what a pain in the ass filming yourself fishing can be.

Nice! We got into a school like that twice over that weekend, it was amazing. Day 3 when we had that 21+ bag for best 5, we were already hammering this one point that kept reloading hard, and then a different class of fish moved up. Four over 4 lbs, two smallmouth and two largemouth, and a handful of 3.75 lbers mixed in all right in a row, it was awesome. And thank you!! Currently running five Hero10's in 4K res at 60 frames per second for most days. Problem is these cameras run hot and aren't intended to run like I use them, so as it's getting warmer, I have to back down to 2.7K resolution and keep it at 60 fps, though it can do 120 fps at that resolution. Higher resolution and higher frame rate makes them run hot fast, even with the aluminum case and handful of heatsinks I have on them, lol. I've done a lot of testing and tried a bunch of different setups to finally land where I'm at now with everything, but I can film for 12+ hours nonstop, and the new mounts I got are sturdy enough I can leave them mounting while running, don't have to take them down anymore which is very convenient. Takes me 5 minutes to setup at the start of the day, then I don't have to do anything to them until I'm done fishing.

[woo602]

Went up to Lake Champlain May 13-16 and finally had a fishing trip hit perfectly for timing. Water temps rose rapidly there, and they were in that perfect prespawn pattern where they were shallow and feasting angrily. Day one video is linked below, we had so many 3.5 - 3.75 lb fish we lost count of those, but we had somewhere around 70-80 fish in the boat at the end of the day, mostly largemouth but plenty of smallmouth from a couple of key spots too. Day two was slower as we gambled making long runs to other areas, the fish were just locking into bed mode so didn't want to play much, only had 30-ish on the day. Day three was insane, we boated 102 bass and best five went 21+ lbs. Fourth and final day we only had a few hours but still managed to put 20 in the boat which made for a grand total of 230+ bass 3 days and change for two people. I still think my ribs are bruised from all the hook sets. The Beast Coast Fishing Open Water (OW) Sniper jig and their Max Feel football jig were the heavy lifters, we easily caught 90% of all of our fish on those two jigs alone. Hope you enjoy the day one video!

May I be so bold as to ask what jig colors were working best for you?

[Reel Northern Bass]

May I be so bold as to ask what jig colors were working best for you?

The Stealth Craw and Stealth Pumpkin are what caught most of our fish, with the MB Melon a close third. Except for Sunday our third day, the MB Melon was the clear favorite color. One stretch where the water was a little more stained than everywhere else, we switched over to Dirtbag for colors just to help it stand out a little bit more. For trailers, almost every fish came on green pumpkin and most were with just a black flake, but I also did well with a black & purple flake and a black & red flake too.

[Boatseller]

Definite trip on my bucket list. Thanks for sharing.

[cwenbass]

Going up this weekend.

[yatesville88fan]

Thanks for posting this.

[BigDaddyBassNJ]

I just got back from Champlain, been going for years , every year a little different, took us day to dial them in , but got into them good at times , biggest a 5.4 lb smallie , and loads of big pike .

[TMG]

Glad you guys had a good trip.
I'll be heading there in the fall.

[paul40269]

I LOVE that net. Won't buy another one, that telescoping handle makes it great for netting and for keeping it stored.



Nice! We got into a school like that twice over that weekend, it was amazing. Day 3 when we had that 21+ bag for best 5, we were already hammering this one point that kept reloading hard, and then a different class of fish moved up. Four over 4 lbs, two smallmouth and two largemouth, and a handful of 3.75 lbers mixed in all right in a row, it was awesome. And thank you!! Currently running five Hero10's in 4K res at 60 frames per second for most days. Problem is these cameras run hot and aren't intended to run like I use them, so as it's getting warmer, I have to back down to 2.7K resolution and keep it at 60 fps, though it can do 120 fps at that resolution. Higher resolution and higher frame rate makes them run hot fast, even with the aluminum case and handful of heatsinks I have on them, lol. I've done a lot of testing and tried a bunch of different setups to finally land where I'm at now with everything, but I can film for 12+ hours nonstop, and the new mounts I got are sturdy enough I can leave them mounting while running, don't have to take them down anymore which is very convenient. Takes me 5 minutes to setup at the start of the day, then I don't have to do anything to them until I'm done fishing.

Do you just hit record and let them roll tape all day or do you use the looping function? If you do use looping, how do you control that many cameras when you tell the GoPro to stop or start recording?

[Reel Northern Bass]

I just got back from Champlain, been going for years , every year a little different, took us day to dial them in , but got into them good at times , biggest a 5.4 lb smallie , and loads of big pike .

Nice! That was pretty common for quite a few people up there the last couple of weeks, the spring weather up here was so weird it had the fish in a weird funk, they didn't know what to do. I got a few pike as well, just nothing big. We both did catch one good drum each though!

Glad you guys had a good trip.
I'll be heading there in the fall.

Thanks Tim! When in the fall are you going back up? I'll be back up there for a week or at least a long weekend in July, long weekend in August (I'm not missing prime time grass mat punching again), and again later this fall. I love that lake.

Do you just hit record and let them roll tape all day or do you use the looping function? If you do use looping, how do you control that many cameras when you tell the GoPro to stop or start recording?

I just hit record and let them run all day, and I have a separate lavalier mic with its own audio recorder for each of us, plus an extra for the few times I have a 3rd person on the boat. For me, this is way easier than using the loop function. That works better for guys that like to use the chest mounts and have a good mic plugged directly into the GoPro, but I absolutely LOATHE that perspective for fishing videos. You miss like 75% of the action where it's just the person's hands reeling like mad.

The downside to my method is it's very memory intensive, I run a 512GB card in each GoPro so I can record at 4K at 60fps or 2.7K at 120fps for 10+ hours. I don't usually fish that long but I like to have the wiggle room. So an average 8 hour day of fishing will result in about 2TB of raw footage, then I have to go through and edit all 5 camera angles down to whichever ones I feel have the best shot.

It's tedious, but for me it's absolutely worth it and especially filming at 4K now. I have so much flexibility to zoom in on wherever we are in the boat to get a good look at the fish or whatever we're doing, without sacrificing overall video quality.

[250bassFL]

[Quillback]

[TMG]

Thanks Tim! When in the fall are you going back up? I'll be back up there for a week or at least a long weekend in July, long weekend in August (I'm not missing prime time grass mat punching again), and again later this fall. I love that lake.



Not sure. Probably in September depending on what days my buddy can get off work.