Top 10 baits from the Toyota Series on Lake Champlain
PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. – The Toyota Series Presented by Phoenix Boats Northern Division event on Lake Champlain was impressive across the board, featuring the best weights ever seen in an event of that level and the best weights seen in July on Champlain. With pros and Strike King co-anglers smashing largemouth and smallmouth on docks, in grass, in current and open water, a smorgasbord of techniques cashed checks, though the standards ended up being the most effective for the Top 10.
One of the big storylines of the week was the influx of water from rains that flooded out parts of Vermont and New York the night before the tournament. At almost the same time last year, a big rainfall resulted in catastrophic flooding in the Vermont mountains, and basically the same thing happened this time, although (thankfully) on a slightly reduced scale. On July 10th, the water level in Champlain sat at about 96.1 feet, and by the 14th, it had risen to nearly 97.3 feet – not much for Lake Cherokee, but a massive amount on a 100-mile-long natural lake. That water inflow changed things a lot – it rolled current through the passages on the causeway that separates the Inland Sea from the rest of the lake, and by Sunday, a plume of mud had spread from the Winooski River all the way up to The Gut.
Winning the event, Kyle Cortiana capitalized on the changes better than anyone. Meanwhile, the overall productivity of the lake had many Champlain veterans in awe.
1. Current carries Cortiana
Minnowing in current on the second and third day, Cortiana rose up the leaderboard to claim his first MLF win.
After catching some on a hair jig and a jerkbait on Day 1, the rest of the event was all about the jighead minnow in a couple of sizes (1/4 and 3/8 ounces) with a couple of different colors of YUM FF Sonar Minnow. To present his minnow, the Oklahoma pro used a 7-foot, medium-light Kistler Helium rod with a Kistler KYRIOS reel and 10-pound braid tied to 10-pound fluoro.
2. Pelagic smallmouth key for Gill
‘Scoping out deep for roaming smallmouth, Drew Gill put together another great event.
For baits, Gill used either a 4- or 6-inch Big Bite Baits Jerk Minnow on 1/4- or 3/8-ounce heads. He used a 10-pound Seaguar Tatsu leader, Ark Reinforcer Series spinning rods and 2500 Ark Gravity spinning reels.
“I had to stay around baitfish and in fairly calm water,” Gill said. “My goal was to fish for shallow smallmouth that were over very deep water. Even though I was over very deep water, some of them I saw eat my bait with my eyes. My deal was based around extremely slick conditions.”
3. LaBelle notches another great finish on Champlain
The best Champlain local ever, Bryan LaBelle led the event through two days and fell to third on the final day. Weighing all largemouth on Day 1, he weighed mixed bags the last two days.
For baits, LaBelle used a Beast Coast O.W. Sniper with a Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Lil’ General, a Deps Sakamata Shad, an umbrella rig, a jerkbait, a wacky-rigged Yamamoto Senko and a vibrating jig.
“We got to see this, for the first time, like this, last year, when we had the big floods come through and the water skyrocketing up overnight,” said LaBelle of the extraordinary conditions. “Obviously, it generated a lot of fish, a lot of bites, and of course it made the cuts good. Leading up to it, I would have never said the weights were going to be what they were. I think it sparked the whole lake, really.”
4. Mitchell makes moves with largemouth
Going all-in on the northern largemouth game, Kurt Mitchell notched another great finish on Champlain. Fishing shallow, targeting docks and cribs, the Delaware angler put on a largemouth beatdown.
“In practice, I thought the weights were going to be pretty low,” he said. “Not low — it was still going to take 20 pounds to win — but I don’t think you were going to see all those big weights. Then we got all that rain. The rain helped the smallmouth guys out tremendously as well, but it helped the largemouth guys out a bunch, too. The water came up, and when the water came up, all those largemouth that were out in the grass flooded the docks. It was amazing – the best week of my life.”
He used the same things he did in the Tackle Warehouse Invitationals event last month – a War Panda Baits Nasty Nugget glide bait, which he makes himself, a Yamamoto Senko and a 1/2-ounce Epic Baits Becker’s All Purpose Tungsten Jig with a Missile Baits Chunky D.
5. Smith set up for another shot at AOY
A perennial contender in the Northern Division when he’s in it, Casey Smith is sitting in third in the Fishing Clash Angler of the Year race heading to the St. Lawrence River. Although he’s no stranger to Champlain, Smith had never fished in the alewives and ‘Scoping era on the lake, but it didn’t stop him from having a great event.
“I had a feeling over the winter that this could be my tournament to win,” he said. “So, I invested a ton into electronics and batteries and this event over the winter. It almost paid off. Sometimes you feel like you have a lake that you understand, a time of year that you understand it well. I’ve been watching how other tournaments were won – even though I’d never done what I did this week. I felt like I understood going into it what it was going to be. I really feel like I understand how Lake Champlain works.”
Plying a minnow offshore, Smith went with the Rapala CrushCity Freeloader on 5/16- and 3/8-ounce VMC Hybrid Swimbait Jigs, thrown on a Douglas XMatrix 744.
6. Open water game also works for Gordon
Continuing his run of great finishes in Toyota Series events, Jeremy Gordon rolled north from Tennessee and looked right at home chasing alewife-eaters on Champlain.
“I tapped into it a little bit two years ago,” he said. “Two years ago I was mostly fishing isolated targets, and I cut a check. We’ve been pingin’ a minner a heck of a lot more now than we were two years ago, so I’m a little more dialed in to that program. Once I knew they chased bait like they do at home, I solely went looking for that.”
His arsenal consisted of a 5- or 6-inch Deps Sakamata Shad paired with a 3/16-ounce Owner Ranger Roller and a drop-shot with a green pumpkin Berkley PowerBait MaxScent Flat Worm and a 3/8-ounce Angler Tungsten drop-shot weight. For his minnow, Gordon rolled with a 10-pound Seaguar Smackdown mainline and a 12-pound Seaguar Tatsu leader. On the week, Gordon targeted fish that were 10 to 12 feet down over 35 to 45 feet of water.
7. Lavictoire goes old-school
Thomas Lavictoire Jr. is no stranger to Champlain, and last week he got to fish exactly how he wanted to.
“It was advantageous, the same thing happened in Irene, back in ‘13 when I won,” Lavictoire said of the influx of water. “What it did was create a lot of current, and it dropped the water temperature and basically ignited the fish to feed. It was the perfect storm; that influx of new water really fired up the fish. I ran everything from Rouses to The Gut to the Sandbar Bridge, just throwing my fastball.”
Flipping a 5/8-ounce 4×4 Signature Series Jig with the weed guard removed and a Zoom Big Salty Chunk, the Vermont pro went to work on the largemouth.
“It was basically old-school stuff – rock piles, weed beds, docks, pilings, drop-offs – anything largemouth oriented,” he said. “Just a lot of stuff I’d fished since I was 16 years old. Basically, largemouth fishing 101, no ‘Scoping, just fishing off the cuff and adjusting to every condition.”
8. Carnright also fishes over the abyss
Seeking to go back-to-back in Champlain Toyota Series events, Brett Carnright came pretty close to successfully defending his title and was right in the hunt after Day 2.
“All 15 of my bass came with Lowrance ActiveTarget and Garmin LiveScope, ActiveTarget 2, and the LVS62,” Carnright said. “I was targeting from 30 feet to as deep as 130 feet of water. The deepest I caught one was like 40 or 50 feet below the surface. I feel like that’s about the bottom where they are active and can bite.”
On the tackle side of things, Carnright used a few minnows, including a Rapala CrushCity Freeloader, a Strike King Z-Too and others on 1/4-ounce and 3/8-ounce heads – both the Queen Tackle LS Tungsten Jighead and the Gamakatsu Horizon Head LG. Carnright used a Megabass Orochi XX “whipsnake,” a 2500 Daiwa Certate reel, 10-pound PowerPro and 10-pound Seaguar Tatsu.
While the lake absolutely went off during the event, Carnright didn’t see the all-out smashfest coming.
“I was surprised for sure, but not with the winning weight; I thought potentially someone could catch 66 pounds,” he said. “In practice, normally when you’re doing that type of fishing, if you throw at 10 big ones, one of them is going to be a 4 1/2-pounder. So, on an average day, you might get one of those big ones a day. In practice, it seemed like you’d get two or three – maybe one out of every five big ones you saw was a mid-4-pound class smallmouth. You throw at enough of them, it’s possible to catch 22-plus. Usually in practice, you might catch 20 pounds, but the possibility was really there for a 22-pound bag.
“The amount of people that caught over 60 pounds, or close to it, for three days, I was not expecting that. That was extremely impressive to me,” Carnright said. “I thought the lake was fishing extremely tough; I only had one pattern. Every day in practice I fished for largemouth, I fished for shallower smallmouth, and I really didn’t get anything going on anything other than the deep LiveScope fishing. I thought the guys that didn’t have that deep LiveScope in their pocket were going to struggle.”
9. Combo pattern works for Latinville
Weighing eight largemouth and seven smallmouth, Ryan Latinville mixed new-school and old-school for the Top 10 on Champlain.
For his largemouth, Latinville flipped a 1/2-ounce Beast Coast Lil’ Magnum with a Missile Baits Mini D Chunk. On the smallmouth side, Latinville targeted open water with a Strike King Z-Too and a 1/5-ounce Gamakatsu Horizon Head LG. For the jig, he used a 7-foot, 3-inch heavy Kistler KLX and he used a 7-foot, light medium heavy Kistler Helium for his minnowing.
“I went into the event with predominantly smallmouth on my mind,” he said. “As I got out there, I did a little more hoping than ‘Scoping, so I thought I might be in trouble if I didn’t go fish some largemouth. The largemouth well exceeded my expectations. I fished in 5- to 8-foot in grass, and it seemed like the largemouth were just coming into the shallows with that rain.”
10. Dyar makes it happen on the New York side
One of comparatively few to do well outside of the Inland Sea or Malletts Bay area, Logan Dyar made the most of his first trip to Champlain.
“All 15 of my fish came from the New York side – I feel like I was the only one over there, I was hardly seeing any bass boats,” he said. “I had two deals going: I had some grass lines with chunk rock, and I had some deeper roaming fish. I was just keeping the trolling motor in the water and covering water.”
Dyar’s grass fish came in 15 to 20 feet, and he hunted roamers over 40 feet of water. For baits, he went with a 6-inch Deps Sakamata Shad paired with a 3/8-ounce Scottsboro Tackle Hellfire Finesse Swimbait Head and a Rapala CrushCity Freeloader on a 1/4-ounce VMC Hybrid Swimbait Jig.
“It was my first time at Champlain — really, my first time up north fishing for smallmouth in general,” said the Alabama pro. “I had the bites to make a run at it. I’ll be back for sure.”