Why Pros Love (and Hate) Lake Champlain

Virginia pro Jacob Powroznic, who stands in third place after two days of FLW Tour competition at Lake Champlain, displays a fine sample of Champlain's bounties. FLW Photo by David Brown.

Ask pro anglers who travel the nation about favored destinations, and many will quickly mention Lake Champlain, where FLW Tour pros are fishing this week. Why Champlain? Mostly because of mixed opportunity to catch big numbers of big largemouths and smallmouths. There may be nowhere in the country where larger quantities of both species grow to large sizes and where tournaments might be won with all largemouths, all smallmouths or or a mix of the two species.

As much as virtually anyone who likes to catch bass enjoys the opportunity to visit Lake Champlain and ply its waters, many pros don't particuarly like to compete there. Looking at results of the tournament that's going on now, Matthew Stefan's tournament might best illustrate what's NOT to like about Champlain as a tournament venue. Stefan's two-day total of 30 pounds, 3 ounces (two limits, with a 3-pound average per fish) landed him in 61st place, which is out of the money and barely above the middle of the pack.

Champlain is also massive, stretching nearly 200 miles in length, with portions in Vermont, New York and Canada. The good part about the size is that Champlan offers endless-seeming high-quality habitat for largemouths and smallmouths alike. The bad part is that the main lake can get rough in a hurry, and an angler's top spots are often a LONG distance away, making for tough strategical decisions.

At the moment, Virginia pro David Dudley is probably really liking Lake Champlain. Dudley brought in a massive 24-pound bag on day 1, is leading the tournament after two days and seems well on his way to locking down his second consecutive (and third total) FLW Angler of the Year Award.

New Fishing Agreement Between Georgia and South Carolina

From Ellicott Rock, where the Chattooga River exits North Carolina, to the mouth of the Savannah River, where the big river meets the Atlantic Ocean, water forms the entire border between Georgia and South Carolina. Whether as a tumbling trout stream, Piedmont impoundment, twisting river or marsh-bound tidal flow, the water along the border provides plentiful fishing opportunities that are shared by anglers in both states.

Realizing the mutual benefit of this shared resource, Georgia and South Carolina have long operated under a reciprocal fishing agreement, which allows anglers properly licensed by either state to fish anywhere on the border waters, whether by boat or from the bank. Recent changes in South Carolina's fishing laws called for a re-working of the agreement, with some changes in Georgia's sport fishing limits. The new agreement goes into effect July 1 (this Sunday).

"Anglers as well as state officials on both sides wanted to continue the fishing license agreement and keep fishing regulations as similar as possible on border waters," said John Biagi, Chief of Fisheries Management for the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division. "To minimize confusion, Georgia sport fishing regulations will largely mirror South Carolina laws on border waters."

New limits for water on either side of the border include a combined 10-fish limit for stripers and hybrids in lakes Hartwell and Clarks Hill (Thurmond), a five-fish trout limit and a 10-fish white bass limit. It's worth noting that limits for crappie and bream are not unified, with larger harvests permitted in Georgia waters.

For details, visit the regulations page at gofishgeorgia.com.

Waist Deep to Beat the Heat

When Northern Minnesota guide Billy Rosner floats the Vermilion River,  he likes to get out and wade gravel bars and rapids to work those areas more thoroughly. Wading is also a nice way to cool down a bit on a hot summer afternoon.

Only a week ago I reported that summer had found its way to Georgia, mentioning that an outlook for days in the upper 80s represented pretty hot weather around here. Well, the temps have gone up another notch or two since then. We're supposed to hit the mid 90s today and then climb into triple digits for the weekend! And looking at the national weather map, it doesn't look like we're alone. Big numbers thoughout the South and the Midwest.

What that says to me is that it's time to abandon boats and step in a creek or a river somewhere. Little is more refreshing on mid-summer day than to stand waist deep in cool stream and fish. Adding even greater virtue, stream fish don't seem to be as bothered by the heat as lake fish, and often  you can find excellent action from smalmouth bass, trout, channel catfish or some other kind of fish by wading up a stream this time of year.

My favroite type of area for really hot days is the head of a big hole, where current from an upstream shoal meets notably deeper water. The fish hold behind boulders in the deeper water and watch the current for dinner. A Rebel Wee-Crawfish will poduce everything that swims in these types of areas and a Zell Pop worked overhead will bring fish crashing to the surface. A good alternative to the artificial approach is to dead drift night crawlers or freshly caught hellgrammites, creek minnows or crawfish into the same types of holes wiht a simple split shot rig.

Double Barreled Tour Action

Both the B.A.S.S. Elite Series and the FLW Tour are making stops this week, with both tours visiting storied northern destinations.

FLW anglers are fishing Lake Champlain, which invariably yields great mixed catches of largemouths and smallmouths. Sometimes one kind of bass dominates top catches. Often the winner has a pattern for each brand of bass or a spot and location that yield good mixed catches.

The Elite Series event, which is based out of Green Bay, probably would have been a smallmouth slugfest except that the Wisconsin DNR deemed a large portion of the best waters off limits. The pros still will  catch plenty of good fish, but the tournament clearly won't highlight the best the area has to offer. Kevin VanDam wrote an excellent column for Bassmaster.com that expresses his disappointment with the DNR ruling and in my opinion does a fine job of summing up the issues and the consequences of the decision.

Meeting Uncle Homer

This photo of Uncle Homer Circle was taken around 1974, which is about the time I began reading his fishing articles in Boy's Life and in fishing magazines. Photo courtesy of B.A.S.S.

Getting to meet Homer Circle was a thrill to me. After all I'd read been reading his articles since I was a young boy. I simply wanted to shake hands with Uncle Homer and introduce myself, but he didn't let the meeting stop there. Instead he immediately began asking me questions about myself and my then-new writing career, and it was obvious by the way he looked straight into my eyes as I replied that he truly cared about the answers.

Our second meeting, though, reveals even more about the sort of man that Uncle Homer was. A couple of years had passed since that first conversation, which had lasted maybe 15 minutes, yet Uncle Homer called me by name when he saw me, and he spoke to me with the familiarity of an old friend (or uncle), even asking questions about things I had told him the first time we met. I only got opportunities to speak with Uncle Homer a handful of times, but each time he asked questions about me, and he always left me with a little joke that seemed to have been hand selected for me.

I'm quite certain that my of remembrances of personal encounters with Uncle Homer mirror the experiences of hundreds of people in the outdoors industry. The "uncle" name that Homer Circle carried throughout his career fit him so well because he was like a favorite uncle to virtually everyone he met. Uncle Homer Circle died Friday at the age of 97 and will be missed by many, with memories, photos and hand-typed letters all cherished.

Scatterd Showers

The rain didn't last long yesterday afternoon, but it certainly was refreshing. My littlest ones spent 10 minutes or so just running in circles in the rain and grinning. Today's forecast includes a 30 percent chance of showers. Same tonight. I hope some of that materializes. I also have an eye on Tropical Storm Debby, which is lingering in the Gulf and has a very uncertain course, and am hopeful that it ends up moving directly north to provide us a much-needed soaking.

Yesterday as I drove past he pond where my children and I often fish, I noticed that our favorite spring flat is now high and day. I haven't been trout fishing lately, but I suspect most North Georgia flows are creeping pretty low and could really use a recharge.

Mississippi River Provides Equal Opportunity

Florida pro Kyle Fox leads the Mississippi River Rumble by 3 ounces after one day of competition. B.A.S.S. photo by Seigo Saito.

The bad news for B.A.S.S. Elite Series pro Chris Zaldain is that he is in 82nd place in a field of 98 pros after day one of the Mississippi River Rumble. The good news is that he is less than 5 pounds out of the lead, and less than a pound and a half separates him from guys inside the cut line, which is 50th place. All but three pros weighed a five-fish limit on day one. All but four weighed between 10 pounds and 16 pounds, 8 ounces, which is what Kyle Fox brought to the scales for the lead.

What all that means is that almost everyone is catching them and that things are apt to get re-arranged a lot during today's weigh-in. If Fox or others toward the top of the leaderboard have indeed identified a spot or technique that is yielding a little larger fish on average that will become more apparent today, and more separation might occur as the tournament progresses.

Quite understandably, no one likes to say much about what they are doing after one day of a four-day event, although Fox did suggest that he wouldn't expect anyone else to be using the same approach as what worked for him yesterday.

Summertime

Summer has been slow to fully set in this year, and we've enjoyed quite a bit of surprisingly spring-like weather for this late in June. The past couple have days have gotten pretty warm, though, and the 10-day forecast shows all highs in the upper 80s, with only slight rain chances. That might not sound hot, depending on where you call home, but in our part of North Georgia, that is a genuine summer forecast.

Recent pond trips also suggest that summer has truly arrived. The past few laps Nathaniel has taken around the edges of the pond have yielded only a few fish, although a friend did catch a very nice bluegill from Nathaniel's boat earlier this week. It's probably time to try some vertical stuff like we did during the winter. I believe the fish in the ponds that we most often fish largely abandon the banks and seek thermal refuge in a little deeper water this time of year. Strange as it sounds, it might be time to pull out the ice spoons!

Elite Series Competition Turning North

Kansas pro Brent Chapman leads the B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year race after six events. B.A.S.S. photo by Gary Tramontina.

The Elite Series Mississippi River Rumble begins tomorrow morning out of La Crosse, Wisconsin. The four-day event is the first of three on northern waters that collectively will wrap up the 2012 season. Next week, the pros will fish out of Green Bay. Then, following nearly two months off, they will wrap up the regular season on New York's Lake Oneida.

The pros have 66 miles of the Mississippi in three pools to fish this week. This La Crosse section of the river has extensive backwaters, which are expected to be very important in the tournament. Water levels, which can change daily on the big river, will play a huge part in determining the patterns that prevail.

The three northern events represent 1/3 of the schedule, so it will be interesting to see how points races continue to take shape. Brent Chapman currently leads the Angler of the Year Race, while Brandon Card leads the Rookie of the Year.

Fishing in Georgia?

Maybe the question I hear the most frequently when I travel is how fishing has been in Georgia. Ironically, that's a question I often cannot answer - at least not from my own experience. The flipside of getting to fish in so many great places and in different parts of the country is that most of the work days I can afford to spend away from the computer get filled on trips to other places.

I do a fair number of quick, in-town pond trips with my children, and I do slip out to a North Georgia trout stream when I get the opportunity. I also try to pay attention to reports and weather conditions, so I do have an idea about what is being caught from waters close to home. Still, I've spent significantly more time fishing in Minnesota and in Arkansas than in Georgia this year.

Of course, I have no travel plans for the next couple of months, and I don't intend to add any. Our next child (Holly) is due in mid-July, so I am going to stay close to home all summer. Most of my time will be spent with my family or working at my computer, but after Holly has been born, I probably will take a few more day trips than I normally find the chance to take. Therefore when I start traveling again and people ask how fishing has been in Georgia, I might actually be able to offer a good answer!

Flying Home

Fishing is done for this week and I'm on my way home. One flight down; one to go. Summer air travel is nice because I don't have to carry nearly as much junk.
It was a great fishing week, with lots of fish caught and story material gathered. Of course when a plane ticket says Minnesota on it, the trip tends to be a good one.

Walleye Time Tomorrow

Somehow this didn't post last night. We're on the water catching walleyes now ...

Today was another great day of river  smallmouth fishing, although the fish weren't nearly as eager to take surface lures today. Instead a YUM Dinger was the number 1 lure. If we'd been tournament fishing today I could have weighed close to 20 pounds with just Dinger fish.
Total change tomorrow, from river smallies to lake walleyes. Sounds like Lindy Spinners might be the name of the game. Change of weather too. Cooler.
Better sleep now.

Vermilion River Bounties

My first two casts of this morning and three of the first four produced topwater fish and within five minutes of launching Billy Rosner's canoe on the Vermilion River, we had caught and released three different kinds of fish (largemouth, smallmouth, northern pike). We caught a dozen fish before we drifted out of sight of the launch area.

I won't claim that the action stayed quite that frantic. We caught fish throughout the day, though, with the bulk of mine attacking an XCalibur Zell Pop and most of Billy's nabbing a BOOYAH Blade spinnerbait. We floated about six miles, making a couple of modest portages along the way.

The river, which flows from Lake Vermilion to Crane Lake, near the Canadian border, is mostly placid, but several stretches of crashing rapids break the river's run. The water is dark but quite clear. Boulders, sand, gravel, current, downed trees and many different kinds of vegetation provide great habitat for smallmouth bass, which are the most prevalent game fish, and the smallies obviously stay very well fed.

Along the way we saw a few mature bald eagles. Occasionally Billy sees black bears or moose. We did not see any other fishermen -- and that on a beautiful June Sunday. That's the norm, according to Billy, who spends a lot of days floating the Vermilion River every summer.

Almost River Time

Canoe is atop Billy Rosner's truck and we're ready to roll. Yesterday evening Billy showed me a bit of the river, including Vermilion Falls. Spectacular. Coffee drank. Time to catch smallmouths! More later.

Northern Minnesota by Late Afternoon

Today's travel began with a drive in my new truck, which Nathaniel, Asher and I picked up late yesterday afternoon. It was sad saying farewell to my pickup, which has served me well and taken us so many places, but practicality won, and I know there is much about the new truck that we'll like much better when we travel.
Next travel legs are by plane, first to Detroit and then to Duluth, Minnesota. Then I hop into a rental car and travel even farther north to the Vermilion River.
Tomorrow begins two days of floating a beautiful river and casting for mean and chunky smallmouth bass with Billy Rosner of Wild Country Guide Service. Fish stories to follow!

Pack Bags, Shop Trucks, Write Fish Stories

Chunky smallmouth bass are the main attraction in the Vermilion River in Northern Minnesota. Photo courtesy of Bill Rosner, Wild Country Guide Service.

Today's to-do list seems pretty packed, with trip preparation and an appointment to go look at a truck in South Carolina both complicating the need to make headway on some writing projects.

The day before a trip is usually somewhat broken. Beyond the obvious need to pack, I typically must take care of a host of things like banking, paying bills, making sure stuff is in order at home and making reservations or gathering phone numbers for the trip. Today's list includes a bit of all of the above, plus plans to go look at a Ford Expedition that I had transferred from one Carmax store to another and that arrived yesterday.

The trip that begins tomorrow, which will be my last work trip until late summer, promises to be fun and productive. In fact, I've been anticipating a float down Minnesota's Vermilion River ever since Billy Rosner of Wild Country Guide Service began telling me about his favorite stretch of river a couple of years ago. It's a super scenic stretch of river through the Minnesota Northwoods that is loaded with fat and angry smallmouth bass and northern pike and includes a couple of portages around river-wide waterfalls. We'll also spend on a day fishing Lake Vermilion, which the river feeds and which is also highly scenic, and then I'll travel to Mille Lacs lake for a day of walleye fishing.

Before I can go anywhere, though, I really need to make headway on some fish stories, so I supposed I'd better focus on writing for a while.

Both Top Bass Tours Competing this Week

Texas Pro Matt Reed is bound to be happy to be competing on Toledo Bend this week.

A big weekend of competitive bass fishing began this morning, with the Bass Elite Series making a stop at Toledo Bend and the FLW Tour fishing Kentucky Lake. Both are huge reservoirs and storied destinations with long histories of competitive bass fishing. It will be fun to see how both lakes produce, which strategies and lake areas emerge as tops and how the respective angler-of-the-year races are effected by these two events.

Anniversary Exploration

Our morning breakfast began with fresh fruit that included blueberries and blackberries picked by the innkeepers earlier this morning on the grounds of Three Pines View. My wife and I are celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary at Three Pines View, which is located near Lake Jocassee in the South Carolina Upcountry.

After breakfast, we enjoyed a walk around the Oconee Bells Trail in Devils Fork State Park, which is only a few miles from the inn. The trail's namesake Oconee Bells had finished blooming, but the rhododendrons was showing its colors in full force.

We also spent time exploring mountain roads and looking for roadside treasures. My favorite stop was Issaqueena Falls, a gem of a waterfall on a tiny creek that is located just off the highway near the town of Walhalla. A short and easy trail leads to a viewing platform partway down the falls. A short but slightly rugged climb down a less formal trail leads to much grander views.
Of course, given the view from our balcony and the total setting at  Three Pines View, we didn't really nee to go anywhere today!

One Little Bream

Yesterday's rain passed early enough that Nathaniel and Mr. Kenneth were still able to fish. In fact, they spent a full day on the water. The fish failed to cooperate, with the day's total catch being a single bluegill that Nathaniel deemed too small for the camera. Seemingly the fish have moved into summer fussiness in the deep clear waters where Nathaniel and Kenneth were fishing because they didn't even see fish around the banks. Nathaniel did hook one other fish that he thinks might have been a walleye, but he didn't get a look at it. Despite a distinct lack of fish activity, they had fun exploring new waters in Nathaniel's boat.

Summer Rain

The good news about that about the rain that has been falling steadily through this morning's early morning hours is that three of my tents are getting dryness tests with no one inside them to get wet if they fail. Yesterday was a basement sorting day for me, and the effort included pulling out various tents I've accumulated over the years to figure out which still have the right stakes, which rain tarps go with which tents, etc. As part of the process, I set up three tents in the yard. I left them up overnight because they provided big evening fun for my three youngest children and I figured they'd like to continue that fun this morning.
The bad news is that Nathaniel has big fishing plans with our friend, Mr. Kenneth, who he often works with in town. They plan to load Nathaniel's johnboat on Mr. Kenneth's utility trailer and haul it to the little lake at Tallulah Gorge State Park. Nathaniel got all his gear gathered yesterday, and Mr. Kenneth took the day off work, so hopefully the rain won't mess up their plans. It looks like the current band will pass in plenty of time, but there could be more regenerating to the west and moving in this direction.

The other good part about the rain, which is more important than our immediate circumstances, is that we can really use the rain in North Georgia right now, and it has been a good soaking rain this morning. If trout streams and garden plots could smile, they'd be doing so right now.

A Good Truck

My red F150 has served me well, but it looks like it's about time to bid it farewell. In July, when Holly joins our family, we'll officially outgrow out minivan for full-family travel. I plan to trade my truck for an Expedition that is about the same age, but has a whole lot less miles. It will work well for my travels and for the whole family, and the rest of the crew will still fit in the van when I'm not home.

I'll miss having an open bed to throw fishing rods, wet waders or a load of mulch into, and I admittedly just like driving a pick-up. That said, the Expedition, which gets about the same gas mileage as my truck, will serve me a lot better for most travel. Even when it's just Nathaniel and me, if we're fishing and going to a music festival on the same trip, we carry a fair amount of junk, and the extended cab space gets tight. If we tote fishing rods in the back, we have to stow 'em every time we stop long enough at any place where they don't quite seem secure in the back of the truck. And we can't tote anything that can't get wet in the back if there's any threat of rain along the way. All that space will be useful to me in the Expedition.

Another good thing about the Expedition is that both back seats fold all the way flat. That means I'll have just as much open open cargo space as I do now when I need it. It also means that as long as it won't be too terribly hot, I'll have a built-in camper space.
My truck virtually knows the way to favored places like Black's Camp on the Santee Cooper Lakes, Gaston's Resort on the White River and the Walnut Valley Festival. I've tallied about 100,000 miles since 2006, and during that time my truck never seen the inside of a shop, except maintenance necessities like tires, brake pads or fresh oil.

My children also like my truck. Somehow it's always more fun to go places in the truck than the van. Maybe that we'll translate to the Expedition. We'll just have to call it Dad's new truck.

Harvest Critical Part of Delayed Harvest

This morning brought an end to my favorite part of North Carolina's delayed harvest trout fishing season, and I probably won't return to favored destinations such as the DH sections of the Nantahala or Tuckasegee River until after October 1, when they revert to release regulations. Likewise, I probably won't return to to Georgia's DH waters until November.

From fall through early summer, select waters in both states are open only to catch-and-release fishing with single-hook artificial lures. On May 15 in Georgia and the first Saturday in June (today) in North Carolina, the same streams revert to general regulations, with a harvest of trout and the use of natural bait both permitted.

I prefer the "delay" period because I'm not a big fan of trout as food fish, I like fishing with artificial lures, and I enjoy the high densities of fish found in these waters during the time when only catch-and-release fishing is permitted. I'm also a fairly mobile angler. Given the choice, therefore, I'd rather not fish waters where anglers are camped out on every big hole, which happens much more frequently in heavy bait-fishing areas.

All that said, I appreciate the "harvest" season on these waters. I've heard many fellow catch-and-release anglers grumble about it, believing these waters would be even better if all the trout had to be released all the time. Beyond the fact that this would take away fine opportunities for a totally different group of fishermen, the idea that fishing would be better simply isn't true. In fact, the opposite is true.

Most waters chosen for delayed harvest designation offer good to outstanding cool-season habitat and can hold high numbers of trout from fall through spring. However, most also run low and get too warm to hold many trout during the summer. Prior to the development of the delayed harvest management concept, most were marginal put-and-take waters that got stocked with low numbers of trout early in the season and maybe a few more in the fall. If these waters were managed with a year-round catch-and-release requirement, they couldn't be stocked with nearly as many fish or most (and in some cases, all) of the trout would die of natural causes during the summer.

Fisheries divisions understandably wouldn't stock high numbers of trout that they knew would not survive through the year, so instead, these would be catch-and-release trout streams with very few trout in them, even during the winter, when they were running cool and full of water, which really wouldn't be very fun!

I'm thankful for those fishermen who are fishing all 26 of North Carlina's delayed harvest streams and lakes this morning and who are excited about the beginning of the "harvest" season. If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't get to catch nearly as many fish in the fall.

River Crossings

A construction-caused lane narrowing prevented me from peering quickly at the Maumee River as I drove across it in the family van yesterday. Major letdown. I'd have to hold out for a tributary crossing in Findlay and then for a few looks at the Miami River before our grand crossing of the Ohio.

For as long as I can remember I've always delighted in crossing or paralleling rivers during travels. In fact, I think the rivers we'd see during family trips from Florida to Minnesota were the events that best helped me bear the long car rides as a boy. Every time we'd start across a bridge, I'd begin a quick study of the river's character, consider what sport fish might call its waters home and then scan the water and the banks for fishermen with hopes of doing a bit of vicarious angling.

Often, I'd borrow my dad's atlas for a moment (or an hour) of what fellow home-school parents world dub "delight directed learning." Looking back, I have little doubt that I learned more about rivers during car rides than I did in all my geography classes combined. I'd trace the rivers upstream to figure out sources and then go downstream to see where they eventually flowed. Little by little, I was also piecing together differences in the appearances of rivers according to topography, regions of the country and settings.

Of course we commonly traveled the same routes (both within Florida and across the country), so time allowed me to get to know some rivers well, and I was able to observe things like how different the Mighty Mississippi would look from one trip to another based on the level of the water. Occasionally, on a Boy Scout trip or some other outing, I'd get to camp beside or canoe down one of the rivers I'd previously seen only as a snapshot and would be able to get to know that river much better.

Four decades later I enjoy crossing rivers as much as I did as a young boy. Often, I'm the driver, so I have to settle for much faster looks; however, I still like figuring out stuff about where a river came from, where it is going and what its waters hold. In fact, just this morning, I looked at the Maumee and Miami rivers on Google Maps and read a little more about the Maumee.