I had the privilege to join as well as I got paired with Bobby Jordan. I drove from Kitchener Thursday after work and got to Bobbys house for almost 10pm. I didnt fall asleep until 1am. I was dreaming of bass in May. I met up with Bobby at 3AM to start our trek to the NY side and begin our Champlain event. With two hours sleep the bass talk and anticipation of setting the hook with my new Shimano Zodias rods were like a wake up call. It was like instant red bull. Friday was our best day for size. Saturday we just missed a bunch of fish but still landed a ton. We went into a shallow back bay where the water was 58-59 degrees. I immediately went into the rod locker and tied on a Live target frog. Thats right, a frog on May 1st. Before most of the buds were on the trees.....I immediately had some boils and interest and I knew it was game on. I took about 20 casts with it and had 6 boils which was a good percentage. I finally got a 3.6lb largie to explode on it. I caught a frog fish in May......in fact May 1st.......incredible...We caught 8 different species over the course of the weekend. We also landed over 60+ bass on the short day on Sunday....I was on fire roll casting a spinnerbait into brush and reeds..cast after cast, fish after fish, the old Terminator t1 held up landing fish after fish. Overall an incredible experience.. With no previous experience on the lake and not even a navionics map it was like showing up and fishing a Major League fishing event. Just drop the trolling motor and go! Use your gut instincts and fish and it paid off.
As we were launching I looked at the water clarity and told Bobby I should of brought chatterbaits. Bobby says I got some...He got the first 3 bass all on guess what! Chatterbaits.....My gut was right!!!
2nd fish in the exact same small pocket surrounded by 3 NY boats fishing crappie....
Third fish in the same pocket with NY boats surrounding us! I rollled another flipping a spinerbait into a few pockets of brush
My first good bite came on a small trench along the bank of rip rap on a Jackall Aska 60SR. It hit the crank beside the trolling motor! Turned out to be our biggest of the trip.
Here she is! The first frog fish of 2015 on May 1st...Look at the smile....Yay baby!
While going up the mouth of a creek channel we marked 6 or 7 huge bars on the Humminbird graph. We thought they were giant female largies, boy were we off. After hooking one and losing by the boat I took another cast and hooked this big girl....Freshwater Drum time!
We ended up catching 8 different species this trip. Heres a Big bowfin i saw peaking his head out of a big weed matt...I flipped it in the matt and out came this ugly "dogfish" I thought I had my 6lbs+ largie hooked. We both hate snakes and eels there was no way we were touching this thing, hence the net pic!
Another first for us was catching a chain pickeral.. Let alone see one. Heres a pic of one!