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Lake Champlain water temp / how's it fishing?


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Hey everyone, 

 

Anyone have any insight on Lake Champlain's water temps and how it's fishing? I cant find any research buoys tracking water temp or wind speed anymore. I'm interested in the inland sea and Missisquoi bay areas in particular. Or if anyone has a link to water temp monitoring, it would be greatly appreciated. I heard it was a late ice out this year. 

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Cold snap the last couple days dropped it to 53-57.  Bite exploded yesterday afternoon.  Full on prespawn to early spawn.  Should be pushing 60 after today in some spots. 

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30 minutes ago, webertime said:

Cold snap the last couple days dropped it to 53-57.  Bite exploded yesterday afternoon.  Full on prespawn to early spawn.  Should be pushing 60 after today in some spots. 

Just what I was hoping to hear. Boat is getting a once over this weekend and packed and will be driving up Wednesday morning. Weather looks good, fresh assortment of jerkbaits ready for war. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/19/2023 at 2:29 PM, webertime said:

Tiny swimbaits 

Keitech football

Ned's (barf)

Are crushing now

Well... fished thrusday, friday saturday. Wednesday was supposed to arrive at 9am but showed up at 9pm due to truck issues. 

Never found the mega wad, and was a slow consistent pick. Thrusday was Dillenback bay - city ledge - province point ledge and all areas inbetween. Saw water temps around 58-60, was excited and threw a jerkbait till my arm was going to fall off, long story short, never caught a fish on it. Ned in green pumpking and  2.8 keitchs, and 2 smallies on a spook at 9pm. 

Friday was east side of Missisquoi bay, check spots from previous years, but water wasn't high enough, fished the point in the middle chatterbaits, keitechs, spinner baits,  and it only produced pike, but kept the rods bent with cookie cutter 27-30" fish. Saw bait getting worked, produced 2 smallies and then fished shallow warm mud and dabbled with the largemouth for a while. 

Saturday, started in missisquoi shallow again, then caught a few pike when things got slow, and then ledge on the east side had smallmouth eating a keitech, turned out to be on beds, messed with them for a little and then headed back for dinner and then went out to carry bay to finish up. 

 

Not the numbers Im used to catching at champlain, but fish were of decent size. Dad got pb largemouth at 5.4lb and I may have broke 5lb on smallmouth... batteries were dead on the scale, should have changed them before the trip, so im assuming being excited it and no scale it was probably 4 and change. 

 

A great trip non the less, and I may stick to summer time fishing there, it's hard to breakdown the lake for 3-5 days in the spring when they can be doing a whole number of things or even just moody. Summer time, deep water and hungry fish seems more consistent. 

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I was up VT and  fished 6/4-6/6.  Water temps outside of St Albans bay was 53.  Fish were on beds there as I watched a derby participant use a flogger to catch 3.  He was solo and it was a learning experience watching him as I have never flogged.   We managed to catch a few on shaky heads, the day ended early due to trolling motor issue.  Wind was out of the NW all three days there and really made big water unfishable for me.  At 62 with back and hip issues I'm not even trying that anymore.  We watched a boat running in it go airborne and come down hard.  No thanks.   Monday we fished a small body of water with water temps in upper 60s.  Caught lots of fish, most quality fish were largemouth with several north on 3lbs.  Quite a few smallmouth but never caught one over 2lbs.  Neds, shaky head and texas rigged worms were the main catchers.  Good news was the TM had no issues, seems what rough water we ran on Sunday managed to loosen a battery connection, which I checked on the water but I guess didn't get it tight enough.  On Tuesday we fished Mallets Bay.  Temps there were 63-64 and seemed fish were post spawn. The outter bay got rough, we connected on smallies over 3 but never got on a bunch of them.  Overall a good trip and always nice sharing the boat with my son.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I hope to be out on the very southern end of the lake soon.  I just got home from a striped bass fly fishing trip on Cape Cod and still don't have my boat ready to go at home... life keeps getting in the way.  Rain and T-storms are in the forecast all week, but I hope to get everything ready to go.

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