Lake Champlain- BASS Open Day 1

Well today was the day of the first day of the BASS Northern Open on Lake Champlain. Time to put the practice to use and get things started on the right track of the 3 day event. I ended up drawing boat number 3 at the meeting so I had to get up and ready to be in the water at 4:30. For those of you that know me I always like to be one of the first boats in the water to allow for time to relax and take care of any problems that might come up. Well, I didn't know this until later but it was a good thing I did that. My co-angler was placing his buddy in the water and they ended up getting into a mess of traffic at the ramp. This would not be a problem except it left me without a co-angler and I missed my number and flight out of the launch waiting on him. I just shook it off and after he arrived made the run to the area I found in practice.

Once there I sat the boat down with only a couple fo other guys near me. Things were starting a little slow but I knew not to panic. I stuck the first fish and it was pulling hard! After it did not make a jump knew it had to be a Pike. After getting it to the boat saw the teeth and got my bait back. My co-angler hooked up two in the time I was getting the fish in and un-hooked. He boated his on a drop shot. After not seeing the sun come out from the cloud cover I changed to the drop shot and had a limit in the boat in less than an hour. My co-angler did the same. We both worked the area hard and both upgraded a couple of times. I had 3 fish over 4 come off at the boat and one break my line in the grass. This is just the price you pay for fishing light line in heavy cover. I found in practice I had to fish the light stuff to get the better bites so I took the risk. Little did I know how much those fish would "haunt" me in the next few days.

After we both upgraded a couple of times I made the run back south to get closer to the ramp. This was both a good and bad thing. When I moved back into open water it was nothing short of nasty. We were in 4-5 footers for over an hour working out way south. I had parts coming loose on the boat and after spearing several waves almost lost my front sonar. I stopped one point above the launch site with an hour to go before check in. We fished there until we had about 45 to get back. We then made the run the rest of the way back and ended up getting back sooner than I expected. I ended my day with 25 mins to spare but was not the only one to do this.

I got my fish out and after hitting the scales had 12.1 to show for my efforts. To be honest I knew I was only a few pounds shy of where I wanted to be and those fish I lost cost me that but I was still proud to have a limit on a lake 1400 miles from home. My co-angler ended his day with a solid sack of 12.7 pounds and both of us were still in the hunt for day two.

I boated all but one of my fish on the Jackall Crosstail shad(Ayu color) rigged on a drop shot. The other bait was the Lake Fork Magic Shad I used alot in practice. The thing that I feel made the drop shot more productive was the sun. When we fished in practice the sun was out each day except one. One the first day of the tournament the sun only came out for about a half an hour, which was when I caught the fish on the swimbait. My co-angler being from the north, knew this already and started out with the drop shot and never put it down. He was also fishing the Crosstail shad as well.