Fishing lake trout on Lake Champlain

Continuing our outing on Lake Champlain (see previous post), we headed back to the main part of Lake Champlain to attempt fishing / catching lake trout, which promised to be bigger and more of a fight than the landlocked salmon we caught earlier on.

Mike's GPS was marked with many waypoints where he'd had excellent success during April, but we were already in the 2nd week of May. As expected, they had already gone deeper, so it was time to try some adjacent areas. After trolling through some "clouds" of bait between 30 and 60 feet, we decided to head to another spot. Again, we got hit as we were bringing in the lines, though it was my buddy that got hit this time. He was more than happy to finally catch his first of this elusive species, was nice to feel some big headshakes on the line as well. He brought in his fish, a nice 5-6 lb lake trout that joined the landlocked salmons in the livewell.

We decided to stay on the spot for a while, but fishing was slow. Then out of nowhere, Mike jump up and yells fish on! We didn't hear any clicker going off or noticed any bounce in the rods, but Mike's amazing 6th sense when it comes to fishing sensed a slight movement in the planer board. Again, he never ceases to amaze me, you;d think I'd be used to it by now after fishing with him a number of times, but he pulls this sort of thing time and time again. Needless to say, we were in awe. Back to the fish, I winched in a decent 3-4 lb lake trout, not too big, but good for the livewell to keep the first one in good company. Funny thing, just when I brough it in, it burped up a nice 5 inch smelt.

With no more hits, we tried to more spots, trolling unsuccessfully for the next few hours. We did mark many fish and huge swarms of bait, but no more hits. We called it a day around 6:30 PM. Filleting the fish when I finally got home, the small lake trout had about 7 or 8 smelt in it's stomach, and the bigger landlocked salmon had some as well.

Anyway, the trip to lake Champlain for lake trout and landlocked salmon was slower than Mike had hoped for, but more than successful for myself. I caught 2 new species that I had been planning to target but never got around to doing, in addition to gaining some experience setting and trolling with dipsy divers and planer boards. Did I forget to mention ending up with a couple tasty dinners?

Anyway, if your looking to catch some nice lake trout before the regular season opens in much of Quebec and Ontario, I strongly suggest having Mike take you out in April, when the big lake trout hit in good numbers. Just contact me and I'll put you in touch with him.