Another Awesome Day!

16.5" of native cyprinid goodness!

Fishing as of late has been fantastic! Don't listen to the B.S. that the media has put out there about Lake Champlain. It fishes great when it is high, you just need to be careful flying around in a boat because of debris. Debris is not a consideration when you are in a canoe however. (Seriously, try me out and you will see!)

I started off the day hunting down a Master Class fallfish. I knew right where to head to and I started slamming lots of fallfish, mostly in the 12-14" range. I needed 15. I hooked a big fish and thought for sure it was the one, but it ended up being a lucky take from a 20" pike. Not long after that I got into a 16.5" fallfish. That was the one I was looking for. Since it was raining, I was wet wading, and I have been getting over a cold (brilliant Drew) I decided to head to other waters.

Check out the colors on this fallfish's face!

When I got to this spot, I looked down and saw a big carp working the edge of the river. I ran back to my truck, grabbed my rod and headed down to get it. It was right where I had seen it last and it was mudding hard!  I knew I was going to get this fish. As I looked at it I realized that it was a mirror carp. Mirror carp are a variation of common carp that have larger, mirror like scales. More importantly, I haven't caught one yet. My first cast got his attention but he missed the take. The second cast he took it solidly and the race was on. It headed up around a log so I had to run out into the river waist deep to get to a rock pile. Then the fish went up through a log jam. I had to run up there and thread my rod through the jam to keep it on. The fish went deep and it felt like it was on some obstruction on the bottom. 

Trying to get the fish to hand

I was a bit worried but it pulled out of whatever it was in. Then it decided to come back through the log jam again. So I had to run to the other side of the channel to get it out. It took about 25 minutes fighting this fish to get it to hand. I was pretty psyched. I got a bunch of great pictures and watched it swim off. The carp was 31" and I estimate the weight somewhere between 12 and 15 lbs. Now for the bad news.... as I started up the bank I heard a crack. Looking down I noticed my leader was caught up on my pliers. I pulled the rod up and there was the tip to my old faithful Orvis TLS 9' 6wt MidFlex dangling. Goodbye old friend. You go back to Orvis Land today.

My first mirror carp

Almost scaleless on this side.

Check out the skin and scale patterns

One big scale with little ones behind it

On the caudal penduncle

Hoover!

I quickly raced to my next spot where I was meeting up with someone I hadn't fished with yet, but I was pretty excited to get out with him. Pat Berry is the new Vermont Fish and Wildlife Commissioner and really wants to promote some of the great fishing on Lake Champlain. So after he got done work in Waterbury he came out to join me. He worked as a fly fishing guide in Montana for 10 years and was dying to get into some carp and bowfin. The weather was less than pleasant- a constant drizzle/light shower with low clouds overhead. Not ideal sight fishing conditions. 

VT F&W Commissioner Pat Berry with his first Champlain Carp

At first we didn't see any fish then the carp started to show. There were mudding fish around and Pat had a take. He didn't get a hook set on that one. The next fish he got a hook set on but it popped out during the fight. I was pretty happy that he was getting into fish. He took to this new (to him) style of fishing like a duck to water. We saw a fish coming through the trees parallel to the boat. He got a great cast in front of the fish and the fish jumped it hard. The Commissioner was using my 8wt bowfin outfit which had 18.5lb tippet. He put the hammer down on that fish and never even put it on the reel. That was the fastest I have ever seen a carp landed... very impressive! It was a nice fish of 9 lbs which is a pretty typical fish. 

We tried for bowfin after that and had one take but it got off. We also saw a Master Class bowfin but she was having nothing to do with the fly. It was really difficult conditions to sight fish and we ended up getting off the water shortly after that. I was pretty happy with the day, but I was drenched and shivering. Like I said, it was brilliant of me to wet wade on a day like that. 

Awesome day on the water!  I am really excited to have caught my first mirror carp and to have Commissioner Pat Berry put some time the water with me. I don't think it will be the last time either!

GASS BAG- the Primitive Post

Well, yes, sometimes that is exactly what I am (especially after certain meals).... but what I am referring to are the Gar Anglers Sporting Society and the Bowfin Anglers Group. Yes, it is true that there are indeed websites catering to those of us who have an unnatural inclination toward the primitive fishes swimming in our local waters! Lake Champlain is the easternmost natural distribution for both the longnose gar (Lepisosteus osseus) and the bowfin (Amia calva) and has impressive populations of both species. 

A nice gar during the spawn

The longnose gar is a fun fish to target. They get big, are easy to see in the water, and will readily take a well presented fly. I fish for them from May until September using rope flies on 8 to 10 wt outfits. A few years back Lawrence Pyne asked me to take him out to fish gar and film it for Vermont Public Television. We got a few nice fish in some tough conditions and the show was a hit (and I will put up a link as soon as VPT has the show back on their website). I don't want to give away all my gar secrets, but it does take some practice to be successful. A gar fly is semi-hookless (here in VT there has to be a hook point so I use size 20 dry fly hooks in the body of the fly) and if you set the hook, you lose the fish! 

Close up of the gar's mouth

The longnose gar is a Mississippi drainage fish that likely entered Lake Champlain via the Great Lakes then the St. Lawrence after the last glacial period. The environs of Champlain were very conducive to this primitive fish- providing many shallow, weedy backwater bays and slow moving rivers that these fish love. The gar was well known to the Abnaki who used its scales as arrowheads. Samuel de Champlain definitely saw them and wrote in his journal (this has been taken as early evidence of "Champ"):
"... there is one [fish] called by the natives 'Chaousarou', which is of various lengths; but the largest of them, as these tribes have told me, are from eight to ten feet long. I have seen some five feet long, which were as big as my thigh, and had a head as large as my two fists, with a snout two feet and a half long, and a double row of very sharp, dangerous teeth. Its body has a good deal the shape of the pike; but it is protected by scales of a silvery gray colour and so strong that a dagger could not pierce them."Just awesome fish. 

Master Class bowfin on Lake Champlain

The bowfin is the last of its kind. The family Amiiade  is well represented in the fossil record from all around the world from as early as the Jurassic Period. Just think, at one point there was a bowfin species that reached 8 feet long. If there were a fish like that in Champlain, I don't think I would be fishing out of a canoe let alone wet wade! Eastern North America is the last holdout for this primitive family of fishes. Characterized by a gular plate (throat plate), slightly heterocercal tail (similar to a shark, but less pronounced), and its namesake long dorsal fin. These predators love shallow weedy wetlands and feed on pretty much anything that gets in its way, although they seem to have a preference for aquatic crustaceans.

Look at the teeth on that puppy!

Angling for the bowfin on Lake Champlain is a relatively simple afair. They take a variety of flies, are easily sight fished, and put up a great fight. The weedy environment that they live in often requires a fairly heavy tippet on an 8 wt rod. There are times however that a 6 wt rod and lighter tippet can make this angling a whole lot more fun. It is not too difficult to get a take, but getting a good hookset in their bony mouth can be tough. A really good hook makes all the difference in this regard. I put many anglers on Master Class bowfin this year. As a matter of fact the bowfin is the most numerous fish species in the Master Angler Program largely because of me.

Great fish on a 6wt!

To my knowledge I am the only successful fly fising gar guide in Vermont. (another guide service does advertize gar as a target but no one in that guide service has yet to catch one- truth in advertizing???). Along with the gar, I brought guiding for bowfin on the fly on Lake Champlain to Vermont. I know I am not the only guide who does this, but in all honesty I taught most of the other guides how to do it. I will have gar and bowfin flies for sale on my website shortly for those of you who might be interested and I will definitely be guiding for them in this upcoming season. Please get in touch with me if you are interested- I would love to help you chase down some primitive fish!

Vermont Master Angler Program

I have mentioned the Vermont Master Angler Program in a few previous posts and I thought I might explain it a little bit. If an angler in Vermont catches any of 33 different species and meet the minimum length requirement of that species they can submit a photo to the program. Once a biologist has looked over the photo and has accepted it the angler gets a certificate stating that they have caught a Master Class fish.  If an angler catches 5 different species in the program in the same year they are awarded a pin and the title of Master Angler for that year. Pretty cool stuff.

Master Class white sucker- a blast on the fly!

The program was begun earlier this year with several goals in mind. Primarily it is a way to showcase anglers that have caught exceptional fish in Vermont. The program also takes over from the old trophy fish records program which had become obsolete. It helps biologists understand where larger specimens of many of these species are located and also gives them a better idea of the sizes of larger individuals in the population.  The diversity of fishes and fishing in Vermont are better showcased in this program. Hopefully more anglers will see the value in less frequently targeted species thanks to this program.

Shawn Good with a nice fly rod caught MC bowfin

 I do have to give a big thanks to Shawn Good the fisheries biologist who really got this program jump started. Shawn saw the need in Vermont for this kind of program and did a lot of the footwork to get it going. Not only has he done a great job with this program he is also the biologist who is in charge of the state's Esocid program. Pike and musky have a great champion in this biologist. Shawn is also a great angler in his own right. I have been pretty fortunate to have spent a couple of days on the water with him and look forward to many more in the future.

46" Longnose Gar- crushed the 36" minimum for Master Class

 Where do I fit into the program? Well, as soon as I heard about it I became a bit obcessed. Honestly, completely obcessed. I started going through photos from earlier in the year to see if I already had some Master Class fish. Then I started targeting fish that I knew I could meet the minimum length of. It didn't take long before I had the 5 I needed for the Master Angler pin. After submitting my longnose gar I had it all wrapped up and qualified for the first pin ever awarded. To say that I was pleased about that is an understatement!

Master Class brown trout: check out this pic in the Fish and Wildlife reg book

At this point I have now submitted 32 entries in 11 different species- all on a fly. I have already set up a tentative game plan to get the remainder. I would like to get all 33 if I can and I intend on doing as many as I can on the fly. And check out the Vermont Hunting and Fishing Regs book this year- I am in there with a real nice brown for the Master Angler Program.  Shawn Good got the second pin awarded. So far this year there are only a total of 4 people who have earned the pin. 

Kevin with his Master Class lake trout

I can't wait to get my 2010 pin! They won't be made until the end of the program year (Jan 10) and only enough will be made for the folks who have earned them. Good stuff!

A Good Day on the Water

The first thing that many anglers would say makes a good day on the water is a lot of good fish or even a couple of really memorable ones. I have had those days and they definitely stick in the memory but it isn't always fish that make a good day. Sometimes it is the company that you keep. 

Terrorist style Limb

  Yesterday Limb (aka Ken Capsey) and I took a jaunt out on Lake Champlain hoping to find some lake trout. We found them, but not in the numbers that were around last weekend. And it was a hell of a lot colder yesterday than it had been last weekend. We were contending with frozen guides and numb fingers. Of course I had to deal with Limb's casting, or actually more to the point his rod placement. He always seemed to have his rod at an angle so that my backcast got caught on it. Bloody redneck!

Ken with a lovely tangle

the result of Limb's less than spectacular rod placement

We didn't find the lakers to be overly willing yesterday. We both had a few follows, perhaps a take or two. We did catch a lot of zebra mussels- easy enough to do if you are keeping your fly on the bottom. We did go to a shallow weedy cove and caught a few perch. It wasn't fast and furious perch fishing, but we both got a few. Limb beat me numbers wise by vertically jigging a chartreuse Clouser but I got the biggest on a bugger. 

We didn't set the world on fire with numbers of fish, or even a single specimen of the fish we were after. We had a good time trying to figure out what the fish wanted, talked boats and tackle, made plans for next year (and later this year hopefully). The wind wasn't bad, it warmed up and it ended up being an enjoyable day on the water.

Ronnie James Limb

Sometimes a good day is just getting out with a buddy who needs some time on the water. 

Namaycush Bachelors

Beautiful sight in the early morning

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to get out twice with my good friend Kevin to chase some big lake trout in Lake Champlain. I got the inside skinny on where a whole lot of them were hanging out (lets just say that the population estimate in the area is in the neighborhood of 30-40,000 fish). These fish are there to spawn, which takes place primarily at night, so during the day they school up and swim in big circles near their spawning site. No, I won't tell you where this is. 

A great start!

We got out there Saturday morning and near this drop off in about 10 feet of water we started to see fish. The day was calm, the light was perfect and Champlain was pretty clear. It was not too long before I got into a nice fish- 27" and it put up one hell of a fight. For years people had told me that catching lakers was like pulling in a boot. I suspect that is true when you are using a pool cue trolling rod on a downrigger at 100 feet with 200 feet of line out during the summer. Well, lakers on a fly rod in 46 degree water is a blast! If these guys are boots, then sign me up for a few pairs of size 10's!

My second fish came pretty soon after the first.

These guys were a lot of fun on my Hydros 8 wt. Put a good bend in the rod for sure. It was a whole lot of casting practice too. Very different ballgame than is typically played in the 802 with a long rod. I don't want to give away too many details since I plan on dialing this in nicely to offer something different for clients.

It was a while before Kevin got into his first fish. But in the mean time we were definitely getting a lot of bachelors. I can now hear a lot of "huh?" from the readers. These fish were following but not committing- hence lifelong bachelors. Pretty good name for them I think.  Kevin's first fish wasn't big, but his second....  take a look and tell me. Definitely Master Class material. The Master Class program is new to VT. I will tell you all about it in a future blog entry, but for now just know that a MC laker has to be at least 30". Kevin's was 31 and a few pennies. Right on Bullpout Moosecrack! (inside joke)

Me doing my impression of the Bonefish Whisperer

I could not let Kevin get the only fish over 30, so toward the end of the day, after many more bachelors, I got a spawned out fish. Not as fat as Kevin's- you could see more ribs on this fish than you see during a catwalk fashion show- but at 30 1/4" I was pretty pleased. It was on a new style fly that I was pretty unsure of but I have since tied up a few more of that fly and I plan on a lot more in the future. Stay tuned for more on that later.

Just an awesome day on the water! Both of us would have loved to have caught more fish, but they really seemed to be in the bachelor mood. I don't know if there was much we could do about that. We tried different style flies, different retrieves, different colors. Seems like typical salmonid spawn behavior to me. It was crazy to see a huge fish just chase the fly right near the boat then swing and miss.  

I hope to get back before these fish are gone, but I don't know if it will happen. Really weather dependent being on the broad lake in a canoe. We were blown off the lake on Sunday. Champlain is a touchy lady at times. We did get into a couple of fish before that though! And slaying perch over decaying weeds is a fun time too....

This sums up my feelings about the weekend's fishing!