September Bite on Lake Champlain - Bass, Trout, and Panfish Heating Up

Good morning from Lake Champlain—Artificial Lure here with your narrative fishing report for Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025. It’s an early September morning and the Adirondack air is crisp, the sun poked up just before 6:21 AM, and you can expect it to dip behind the Green Mountains around 7:23 tonight. It’s classic late-summer weather: patchy morning fog lifting fast, giving way to partly cloudy skies and temps in the upper 60s, climbing to a comfortable 75 by the afternoon. Light northwest winds are set to pick up a bit after lunch, just enough to riffle the surface and trigger a solid bite.

While Lake Champlain is freshwater and not tidal, falling water levels are being observed in shallow bays and coves this time of year, which means fish are pulling to deeper structure as summer wanes. Watch out for increased algae in the shallows—the water’s clear as ever, but some warmer, stagnant pockets could harbor blooms, so steer your pets clear of any scummy edges.

The college bass season just rumbled through, and the northern end of Lake Champlain lit up with big catches. Jessica Hickey from Paul Smith’s College took top honors this past weekend, pulling a bag of 20.42 lbs anchored by two largemouth over four pounds and a pile of chunk smallmouth. Her key? Finesse tactics with a drop shot in 8 to 20 feet, precisely working those offshore humps and rocky structure from Chazy Bay south toward Cumberland Head. According to her coach Brett Wimsatt, they found lively smallmouth schools and deep weed beds, with the bigger largemouth coming out of deeper water than most folks expected this late in the season.

Shore and kayak anglers have been reporting steady action as well. Swimbaits and ned rigs are big producers right now for largemouth—young Annabel Hellum was spotted landing a beauty tossing a paddle-tail swimbait on Champlain’s New York shore. For smallmouth, stick with drop shots, finesse worms, and the classic tube jig, keeping your presentations slow and close to bottom transitions or scattered rock.

The salmon and trout bite is quieter lately, but keep an eye on the Boquet and Ausable Rivers. The New York DEC and US Fish and Wildlife Service are launching a new assessment of Atlantic salmon in the Boquet, aiming to improve future stocking and habitat—so look for those silver missiles as September cools down, especially below the dam in Willsboro.

For panfish fans, September bluegills are on the move but can be a challenge. Try live bait—small worms or soft plastics—near weedlines off North Hero or the flats west of Port Henry. Northern pike are settling onto outer weed edges, and spinnerbaits or large jerkbaits will move the toothy ones.

Hot spots to target today:
- The off-shore rockpiles and weedbeds between Chazy Landing and Point Au Roche for a mixed bag of smallmouth and largemouth.
- The Crown Point Bridge area near Port Henry, where tournament boats have consistently stacked up solid limits, and the scenery can’t be beat this time of year.

Best lures and bait this week: drop shots, ned rigs, swimbaits, and tubes for bass; live worms or soft plastics for panfish; spinnerbaits and big spoons for pike; and always have a silver stickbait ready if you’re chasing early salmon or big fall walleye in deeper cuts.

Thanks for tuning in to this Lake Champlain fishing report! Don’t forget to subscribe for more daily insight and hot bites straight from the lake. This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease dot ai.

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