How To Catch Northern Bass | St. Lawrence River & Lake Champlain Recap

All right guys been up here up north for almost an entire month now So we had two tournaments almost back to back one on st Lawrence river one on lake champlain Then we had like a two week break and then we have another tournament on lake st Clair the actual first day of the tournament starts tomorrow So you'll be watching this video the day before the tournament if you watch it today. I put it up anyways I elected not to go home in the middle. So i went up here fishing for smallmouth I'm gonna take this time to show y'all exactly what I caught them on on st Lawrence river and also lake champlain So lake champlain is gonna be a little bit more fun because we actually caught some st Lawrence river. We didn't really catch too much and we caught everything that we weighed in I believe No, we caught nine out of the ten fish we weighed in on this exact rig right here This is a standard drop shot. I've got a seven foot medium fast rod i've got the Gamakatsu g finesse with a ten keeper This is the shin fukai hook that I actually like to use a drop shot on and I actually will take the worm and thread It up onto this hook So i'll actually take the worm Run it down into here and thread it up on the hook So it's coming out the back of the worm like that So i've got like an inch inch and a quarter Back in the worm instead of just nose hooking it and still whenever the fish bites it I've got a really open hook point and i'm gonna land more fish and get the hook in more fish, especially Over there. We're fishing like 30 35 Foot deep is like standard a deep bite is like 50 foot. So you're fishing extremely deep So the less plastic you have to go through the better So you want to always have your hook all the way exposed? And another thing is when you're fishing that deep and current you have to use the braided line backing This is 20 pounds This is the high visibility white canine braid that I use and whenever you're fishing that deep and that much current You have to have the braid have to have your drag relatively tight To get the hook in those big small mouth because a big small mouth has a very dense mouth And it's hard to get the hook in them. So that's what I used I was using a half ounce drop shot weight almost the entire week Even whenever I was down in Lake Ontario fishing that scattered rock pile So what I did on the first day whenever y'all see me lose all those fish I'd found a scattered pile of boulders. It was like six or eight big boulders Surrounded by a sand flat and I was just kind of pitching and casting and kind of dragging this little drop shot around on those Isolated boulders and I was using a half ounce weight for that And when I was fishing out 50 foot deep in the river, I was also using a drop shot weight for that I mean half ounce drop shot weight and then on day two when you saw me catch 16 and a half pounds I was throwing the half ounce drop shot weight in the river primarily and I had actually got to some bluffs that were making a Big current eddy and I was pitching that little drop shot up beside the bluffs and then it falls straight down in the eddy to the bottom and those Bigger small mouth were sitting there right in that eddy ambushing bait when it came around the corner of that bluff So that's what I did on St. Lawrence River Now, let's move on to Lake Champlain, which is now my favorite lake in the country Just because there's so many fish in there, even though I didn't have that good of a finish I think on St. Lawrence River I came in 60th and then on Lake Champlain Ended up coming in 22nd. So i'm gonna show y'all what I did there now for the most part I gotta grab this rod from over here one of the main things that I was doing was fishing milfoil and I would Mix in some scattered boulders and scattered rock and even some docks here and there but for the most part I was focused on The best cleanest deepest milfoil that I could find on the lake and I had found four patches of that in various locations, so I would run that and One patch of milfoil was only like two and a half three foot deep with some deeper spots being four So in that kind of stuff I was throwing more Moving baits and stuff around it because even if they were underneath it if there was any kind of wind blowing or anything like that They would come from all the way on the bottom to eat something. So on day one of the tournament y'all seen me throwing around this Standard, it's just a the normal old school zoom horny toad. That's the one I was throwing right there I was throwing on a four alt. I think this is actually a berkeley fusion hook with a I upgraded the screw lock to a owner center pin screw lock. That's the one I almost always use So on day one, I never threw that bait in practice at all But on day one I got there and it was relatively calm and I actually tied that bait on the night before And I told hunter I never threw that in practice, but I feel like they might buy it tomorrow being cloudy So it was some shallower Milfoil mixed in with some other types of grass eelgrass stuff like that And it was only like two and a half three foot deeper I was mainly targeting and whenever it was super slick and cloudy I decided to pick that horny toad up after I threw the chatterbait for like 15 minutes and caught two little ones I picked that top water up and I think within three minutes i'd caught like a three and a half pounder on it So I kept that in my hand for like a couple hours until the sun really got up Caught me 17 pounds relatively quick on the horny toad in like an hour and a half Maybe then I went from there and this is something I did every single day I waited some fish every single day throwing this square bill right here This is just a lucky craft lc 1.5 in a bluegill color I was actually Upsizing this because I was throwing it around a lot of grass and big rocks and I was trying to catch big fish on it So I went to 12 pound line where I normally crank with 10 pound line That's something I do that Most people don't do is I crank with squarebill with 10 pound line and what that allows me to do is Normally when i'm throwing a squarebill, I can hit a four foot diving squarebill I can hit six foot with a 10 foot with 10 pound test line so I would decide to upsize for this one because I was fishing around a lot of heavier vegetation and Some of these bigger rocks and i'm glad I did because on day three I caught the biggest fish of the entire tournament that I caught and he had me underneath a boulder for like 40 seconds And I was just thinking soon as I landed that fish. Thank god. I went to 12 pound line instead of throwing my normal 10. So Big bulk of my weight came on that There's a a weird time whenever you're fishing grass. So first thing in the morning When the sun is not up the fish are really out and you know They're roaming a lot whenever the sun is like at an angle whenever it's like nine o'clock in the morning What happens is the grass has leaves on top and then the basket underneath the leaves but when the sun's at an angle Those leaves are not creating the right type of shade to really put the fish where you can pinpoint it So when the sun was at an angle at like nine o'clock in the morning I would go throw this squarebill and go crank some isolated boulders and stuff like that With those algae bloom and then when the sun got directly overhead and that grass was making a really nice shade Then I would go back and I would take my half ounce weight all the way up to a One ounce weight and I was flipping the mill full and that allowed me to really pinpoint where the fish were Whereas if I was fishing around at nine o'clock I could flip randomly, but I could never really call my shot and it just took me a long time I had to go very slow So at nine o'clock in the morning from like nine to eleven I'd pick up that squarebill every single day and go crank everything that I could find that I think a fish would be on And then when the sun got up i'd go flipping and that's pretty much what I did on every single day I can't really think about think of any kind of a certain time I'd do anything different except for hold on. I gotta find one more rod All right This is another thing I was doing at the funk time of the day between nine and eleven wherever I said that sun was at A weird angle I would go to a senko texas rig with an eighth ounce weight on a four alt straight shank hook And I would pitch this everywhere whenever there was no wind no clouds No conditions at all And I feel like there was still fish in the area that wouldn't bite a squarebill or just to follow up that squarebill I would pitch this senko around anything I could find boulders isolated grass dock post I would pitch it around whatever and I did that whenever it was at that funky time of the day when the sun's at an angle And there weren't really positioned that these are the two things I picked up then I went back to flipping So that's what I did I kept it pretty simple went to champlain found the best meal full fished it and then I on st Lawrence river, I you know Targeted the bigger boulders and tried to find the right depth and run that but obviously that term didn't work out too well, but I can say I made relatively good decisions and Got the bites to do well in that one as well So I hope y'all enjoyed that video just giving you a little bit of a rundown trying to answer a lot of the questions that I Got so a lot whenever y'all saw me fish around those marinas What happened was that water was so clear and there's so much boat movement around those marinas It allowed that meal for to grow up to like five or six foot deep and never get the algae on top Whereas 90 of the meal full in the lake had a real bad algae on top of it and the fish wouldn't get in there That's why I was targeting those that meal full around the marinas. It seemed to be more productive and prettier grass So that's what I did on both terms up here in new york. Hope y'all enjoyed the video Leave a like leave a comment hit that subscribe button We're going fishing tomorrow in the bass mashing lead event on st Clair so you want to be subscribed turn the alerts on so you don't miss that video when it does come out We'll see y'all