Lake Champlain Fishing Report: October in Bulwagga Bay

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I’ve found this to be an absolutely crazy summer where I haven’t had much time to write. Work has been incredibly stressful lately given how understaffed we (like everyone, it seems) have been, and trying to hire some good people and retain many more. I’ve also gone completely bananas by what’s going on in the stock market and that has taken a good deal of my free time as well! The low water levels at Lake Champlain haven’t helped, either. Normally, I could get my boat to my dock through at least August but this year I couldn’t even bring it there in July. All this conspired to mean that there weren’t as many fishing adventures in 2021 as in years past, but I was able to get a quick ride north in this weekend to Bulwagga Bay with the wife and kids.

A Quick Jaunt to Bulwagga Bay

When I was last at Champlain in July, I had a hard time even launching my boat at the Crown Point boat launch. While I love my Lund Impact, it isn’t the easiest boat to launch in shallow water. Given the Lake Champlain water level reports were showing comparable levels for this trip, I decided to take the kids up to Bulwagga Bay instead.

Bulwagga Bay has been very good to me the past few years. I’ve had good luck trolling for pickerel in its southern, weed-choked shallows, and had great success throwing Rat-L-Traps along its western rip rap shore this year. I opted to stick to the latter with the kids as the very dry year has meant an abundance of shallow water weeds to contend with, and I figured the deeper water would give us the best chance.

As I was taking my daughter, I knew I’d only have a short time. She’s still very young (3) and isn’t quite as enamored with fishing as my son was. She enjoys it and asks to go frequently, but if the action isn’t hot and heavy she has a hard time staying focused for more than an hour or two. That meant focusing on presentations I knew would work. I tied on a white war eagle spinnerbait while I handed my son a drop shot with a live worm.

The Results:

My son beat me four fish to two and won the coveted prizes of “most fish,” “biggest fish,” “smallest fish,” and “most species.” In other words, he thrashed me on all accounts! While he was using nightcrawlers, he wasn’t just letting it sit there. Instead, he brought the worm back towards the boat with a a series of short hops. While the western shore of Bulwagga Bay is fairly deep, we were catching them close to shore in what is probably 3-4′ of water.

yellow perch caught in Bulwagga Bay, Lake Champlain
A yellow perch caught in Bulwagga Bay, Lake Champlain.

Surprisingly, that was the only yellow perch we caught. Even though my son was using nightcrawlers, all of his bites were big. This probably was due to our focusing on weed beds vs. the rocks directly, as there are a few spots in that bay where you are nearly guaranteed a feast of rock bass and other panfish.

Largemouth bass caught in Bulwagga Bay, Lake Champlain
A nice photo with the kids.

It certainly wasn’t the longest trip out there, but it was nice to take the kids up one last time. While fishing on Lake Champlain is great in the fall, it’ll get a bit too cold for them going forward and if I go, I’m going alone from here on to close out the year.

Useful Information

Granted this is a short post so here’s a few useful tidbits for anyone following and to help you with your own October trips to Bulwagga Bay.

  • Date: Saturday, October 9, 2021
  • Time: Roughly noon
  • Water Temps: 65 degrees at surface
  • Weather: Slight chop but mostly clear skies with a few whispy clouds
  • Location: Bulwagga Bay, Western Shore near rip rap
  • Presentations: White spinnerbaits (2 fish), drop shot with nightcrawler (4 fish)
  • 5 largemouth bass taken, largest approximately 2 pounds.

Sorry for the short post but hopefully this helps someone.

Thanks,

John Paxton

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