I’ve been working with my son lately on persistence and keeping a positive attitude. He, like every normal six year old, is starting to notice that life doesn’t always work out exactly as planned, and it’s my job to help him figure out how to “keep calm and carry on.” He got a great lesson in why persistence pays off this past week when my father and I took my son on a fishing charter with my old friend Captain Mick Maynard of www.lakechamplainangler.com to try some vertical jigging for lake trout on Lake Champlain. Many things didn’t break our way until our grinding finally paid off and resulted in some of the best pictures of a smiling six-year-old a father could ever ask for, but it was a nail biter at first for sure.
The Objective
Our objective was simple – put my son on fish. He reeled his first fish in before he was two, so I knew he had a good chance of prevailing. All the same, I was pretty nervous. Lake trout are formidable opponents, and jigging for them is something I knew nothing about. Further, my boy has rapidly reached the point in his fishing career where he gets annoyed when he doesn’t catch a fish “all by himself.” That’s not to say he won’t happily run over to reel in any rod you hand him, but I knew I’d hear all about it if he didn’t hook up with one on his own.
I really wanted my son to have a good time out there, and hoped we could pull it off. All the same, going for lakers very much violates my maxim of “quantity over quality” when fishing with kids. I spent a good amount of time over the past several weeks coaching my son. We discussed how he couldn’t expect many bites, and he might not catch anything. I told him he couldn’t get frustrated or bored – we would have to keep plugging away.
Luckily, I could say for sure that Captain Mick would do his best for us. I’ve been fishing with him for over a decade and he checks every box when it comes to picking a good fishing charter. My son seemed reassured by this and I told him to trust Mickey and do exactly what he said. I hoped that he’d remember that and keep a good attitude despite being pulled out of bed at 3 a.m.
Obstacle #1 – The Weather
We’ve been trying to get out jigging for lake trout with Captain Mick for a few years now. This is an open water sport on Lake Champlain, so you do need to pick your days. Unfortunately, we’ve had to either cancel a few trips the past few years or go to “Plan B” of a more shallow water attack given rough weather. Even on this trip, we had the dreaded, “The forecast isn’t good, but it’s your call” conversation the night before. Once again, I managed to pick the one day of the week that called for a deluge of rain. Even so, there wasn’t any indication of thunderstorms and the wind wasn’t supposed to be too bad, so we decided to go for it.
A double edged sword about fishing on Lake Champlain is that the weather reports are typically useless. You have to understand that the counties and towns are so vast up in the north country that even a guarantee of sunshine or rain is nothing of the sort. You can very easily find yourself in a situation where you’re either staring at rain far in the distance or being surprised by a microburst that rushes down from the Adirondacks before you can react.
It’s so unpredictable that I’ve taken to say that people don’t get to become meteorologists until they’ve killed at least three fishermen. Most times, Murphy’s Law dictates that this isn’t going to work out your way. I guess on July 8, 2021, someone up there was looking out for my son. While there was a bit more wind than forecast early, after a few hours in the wind piped down and we had perfect conditions for jigging.
Obstacle #2 – Finding Lake Trout
The next obstacle we had to overcome was finding lake trout. When you’re fishing for them in the summer, you’re going out deep. On Champlain that meant heading far out into the main lake. The vastness of this habitat cannot be overstated, and fish are known to swim around! Unfortunately we didn’t find too many spots that held a huge number of fish so we were dropping down on little groups of 2-3 hoping to entice a bite. We spent a good amount of time moving around – the deep water equivalent of power fishing, I suppose, but aided by Mick’s extremely cool 15″ Humminbird fish finder. If my moon tickets ever take off, I’ll have to buy one!
Where to Find Lake Trout
I’m not going to give Mickey’s spots away, but I think it’s fair to at least explain what we were looking for so you can try and jig for lake trout yourself. Basically, it all boils down to structure, as with any other fish. You’re going to want a good topographical map that has detailed depth contours (here’s a link to a great topographical map of Lake Champlain). Depending on the time of year, lake trout will hold at different depths. We fished in 80 – 110 feet of water or so in early July. Earlier in the year (March, April) you can find them shallower as evidenced by those going after them in Bulwagga Bay. Later in the year, Mick tells me you need to go even deeper (120+ feet).
While depth is important, the contour lines are even more so. Basically, you’re looking for humps, reefs, points, or other interesting topography. It’s not really that different than analyzing a shoreline – you’re just doing so with structure that lies 100 feet under water. Structure that you’d be interested in fishing if seen on the surface will likely hold fish down below as well.
Once you get to these spots, you’re going to want to use your fish finder to zero in on fish. Specifically, you’re looking for fish cruising just off the bottom (1-3′) as these will be actively feeding. You’ll see them show up almost as “snakes” on the fish finder. They look like big fat strings of yellow and red just off the surface. Once you find them, try to hold over them and drop your lure straight down. This is much easier with a Minn Kota Terrova or other trolling motor with a spot-lock feature. If you are unfamiliar with this great product, check out my review on the Minn Kota Terrova.
Obstacle #3 – Hooking, Fighting, and Landing Lake Trout
Once you find lake trout, you have to get them to bite. Again, I don’t want to give away Mick’s secrets as his livelihood depends on them, but I don’t think it’s shocking to tell you that you jig for lake trout with, well, jigs. We used a particular large soft plastic on them, though I suppose others would work as well. These are big fish and they are deep so you’re using heavy jig weights to reach the bottom quickly, and large lures to entice fish to bite.
As with most fishing, the trick to triggering bites was to add some erratic action to your lure. It’s really no different than a jerkbait, jig, or even twitching a spinnerbait as you burn it in. The erratic action mimics prey trying to escape and triggers a predatory response. The difficulty is that you’re fishing so far down that it takes forceful jolts of the rod to get the action you want. We tried to keep our lures just off the bottom and get them flaring out as best as possible. If your lure was too far off the bottom or laying directly on it, you weren’t going to get many bites.
Challenges when Jigging for Lake Trout
Our biggest challenge by far was hooking lake trout well enough that we could get them to the boat. While it wasn’t too difficult to solicit a bite, getting them to the boat was another story entirely. Point in fact, we lost our first SEVEN fish that hooked up with before we started to get the hang of things, and probably lost close to two dozen before the day was through. Our landing percentage was very similar to what you would expect when fishing with frogs.
There were several issues we had to contend with:
- We were fishing at depths of 80 – 120 feet or more which made a solid hook set difficult;
- Lake trout have very bony mouths and we were using large hooks on heavy jigs that have difficulty penetrating them;
- We were all doing our best to put my kid on fish, which meant handing him the rod after we hooked up a fish.
The Hook Set
An authoritative hook set is critical, and at these depths that means using braided line and stout tackle. Captain Mick set us up with his Vexan Rods paired with Lews reels. These were spooled with braided line that seemed to be about 20lb test. We were using 17lb test fluorocarbon leaders though Mick mentioned that 20lb is also worth using. These combos allowed us to get a pretty good hook set into the fish, but only if you were paying close attention. If distracted and forced to set the hook awkwardly, it was a pretty good bet that fish was coming off.
Keeping Constant Pressure
Assuming you were able to drive the hook point into the fish’s boney mouth, the next challenge was keeping it there. Even the slightest slack in the line, it seemed, caused these fish to get away. It was extremely important to keep a constant bend in the rod and pressure on the fish to keep the hook pinned into its jaw.
This of course is easier said than done when trying to hand off a rod to a six-year-old. This is not a fish you can give a single inch! It took us several tries before we got it right. At least my boy got a good lesson in not giving up.
Persistence Pays Off
Eventually, we got the hang of things, “Murphy” took a coffee break, and we started landing fish. To say my kid had a blast was an understatement. To say the three adults in the boat were relieved would be the understatement of the year. As mentioned, we’d lost so many fish between us, and you never know how many chances you’re going to get — you need to convert. We were all ecstatic when we finally did.
Once we beat the skunk, we had much better luck for the remainder of the day. So much so that we even managed to get a triple. That was something after how many fish we lost during the morning, but it’s a photo I’ll cherish for a long time – three generations and three lake trout in the boat. You never know how many more opportunities you’ll get to do this, and God blessed us with the chance.
Other Fun – Lamprey Eels
Lake trout weren’t the only entertainment. My son also had a lot of fun playing with the lamprey eels that often came up with them. He’s your typical boy when it comes to handling critters. He spends many of his weekends prowling local ponds for crayfish, frogs, and turtles, so handling lampreys was no big deal for him. These provided an interesting distraction and something cool he could tell his mom about.
The Kicker Fish
While my son did reel in several fish that others hooked, I am beyond thrilled to say that he hooked and fought several fish, including the largest of the day, all on his own. The biggest of the day went 32.5″, and 11lb 10 oz. It was considerably larger than most of the others we boated, and was nearly as tall as my boy!
He was extremely excited about this and couldn’t wait to go home and tell all of his friends. He’s even willing to show them the picture, “even though he’s smiling” in it 🙂
To me, this was the photo that sealed the deal as another great charter with Captain Mick and a wonderful memory with my boy that we’ll talk about for years to come. It also was a day that provided a valuable lesson in I’d say for a six-year-old, it’s not too shabby! Many thanks to Captain Mick for putting my son on fish and helping me put some great photos in the family album!
Want to have a great trip like ours? Book a trip with Captain Maynard today at www.lakechamplainangler.com
Thanks for putting us on all these fish, Mickey!
John Paxton
