Lake Champlain

Today was my most successful day of ice fishing yet! I managed to land two gorgeous lake trout with the biggest coming in at 30 inches long, my new biggest fish through the ice. The day started out very calm at the first spot, but quickly picked up to around 30 mph winds, causing the tent to nearly fly away multiple times. Thankfully I only managed to fall once on the slick ice, however, my entire leg went down the hole when trying to pack up the tent. I’m still trying to figure out what kind of leeches/worms this lake trout coughed up.

Got to hit the ice this morning to target some lake trout and I managed to land two! These were both on the smaller side, but it’s still quite the fight pulling these things up from almost 97 feet of water! The first spot of the day had the clearest ice I’ve ever seen and was well over a foot thick. I could even see the fish fighting from almost 30 feet below the surface!

This morning I got another chance to target some aggressive lake trout through the ice. I tried last Friday and managed to get about 7 bites, but unfortunately, I missed each fish. Today my luck was a little bit better as I finally landed one fish, after missing four others. It was a bit on the slower side since I spent about 10 hours on the ice today, so bites were coming only every 2 hours. This gorgeous lake trout came in at 24 inches long, which makes it the largest fish I have ever caught through the ice. I have a feeling this record won’t last long as there are plenty of bigger lake trout roaming around.

Today I finally got onto my first hard water fish of 2026! I managed to pull up this little laker in 95 feet of water, the deepest I’ve ever fished. This guy ate my baby whale swimbait on a megabass spinhead jig. Hopefully I can get onto some bigger ones in a few days!

The bite was on.

First ice of the 2025-2026 season! Caught four gorgeous brook trout today, my second ever species through the ice! This winter I plan on hitting the ice hard so hopefully this is just a taste of what’s to come. Unfortunately I’ll have to wait until nearly February, as I’ll be heading home for winter break on Saturday.

It was a brisk 24 degrees this morning on the lake and the 20mph winds didn’t help to keep me warm. Once again I was faced with an east wind which is by far the most difficult wind to fish for these lakers in. I knew the bite was going to be hard, but what I didn’t expect was to run into a new species, my first ever Lake Whitefish. Two of them in fact! The only lake trout of the day bit my swimbait the cast before I landed my first whitefish. Along with the tough conditions, it snowed all morning and the jetty was quite icy. I think I may have overreached with my goal of 100 lake trout, and missing a week of prime fishing didn’t help. Thankfully, I should have a few more days of laker fishing as long as I can stick out the weather.

Nice laker off the jetty