Breezy, but busy

Fishing for pike proved successful at lake delta

By DENNIS APRILL, Outdoors Writer

Last Sunday, while the south wind howled up Lake Champlain leaving six-foot whitecaps in its wake, Ricky Doyle, my 15-year-old daughter Karalyn and I fished the mouth of the Great Chazy River, waiting for the blasts to subside.

We were fishing as part of The Happy Pike Fishing Derby, just for fun, although we did want to catch some pike. We met at 8:30 a.m. at the Chazy Landing State Boat Launch, but because of the wind, we would have to fish the river first.

"There’s no point in risking going out there for a few fish," Ricky, who is from Keeseville, said, and he should know. He has spent three decades fishing the big lake, first as a recreational angler, then as an amateur B.A.S.S. competitor. This year, he will fish as a professional.

In addition to the wind, the cold damp weather penetrated out rain jackets. As we worked our way up river beyond the railroad bridge, Ricky caught a northern pike on a Strike King plug. The pike, about 2½ pounds, had recent signs of a tussle with a larger pike — blood and a wound on its side. Ricky released it.

Karalyn and I were using white spinner baits, until I, too, switched to that plug in chartreuse and white. After a stretch of working the weed beds, flooded trees and docks, I caught a pike, this one about the same size as Ricky’s was. It was big enough to keep, but I sent it back anyway. We had decided that if we caught a fairly large pike, we would keep it; the marginal ones would be released.

About 11 a.m., the fishing picked up, and in the next hour and a half we landed about 18 pike and bass, the latter released because the New York bass season wasn’t open yet. When going after pike, which are found in the same places as bass, it is almost impossible to avoid catching both. All the bass we caught that day were not spawning fish, but rather swimming suspended six feet or more above the riverbed. Ricky said the water, even at 61 degrees, was still too cold for bass to spawn.

About 1 p.m., the wind shifted to the west, and the big lake calmed some, enough for us to give it one last shot in the weed beds just beyond the delta. Here, even in 53-degree water, Karalyn and Ricky caught a couple of small bass. Ricky had changed to a fluke soft bait; Karalyn continued to use the Strike King plug.

The derby ended at 3 p.m., but by 1:30 we called it quits. Back at the Chazy Recreation Park, the scoreboard showed a 9.44-pound pike in the lead. Our largest for that four hours was maybe three and a half pounds, but that didn’t matter — we still caught a lot of fish in a short period of time even with having to deal with a heavy wind.