After driving up Friday night and seeing every flag we passed hanging straight down, we woke Saturday morning to a very stiff breeze out of the South. I met Tom at Benson Landing, and we put the boat in there, to take advantage of the wind protection afforded by the narrow, riverine section of Champlain from there south.

There was a boat already fishing our favorite stretch right at Benson landing, so we ran down to Brown's Point and threw spinnerbaits to start the day. A couple pike with lousy aim missed our lures at the boat and sprayed us as they turned away. We moved a bit south, and started to hit the occasional, but small fish -- bass, pike, pickerel -- and that was about how the morning went. A small pike here and a small pickerel there, a couple largemouth over there, all on spinnerbaits. We were more than mildly disappointed that the hard stuff pattern that is usually money in the bank on lower Champlain in the fall produced squat.

About 11, we decided that relocating up around Ticonderoga might be in order. We made one pass on the Benson Landing bank on our way out, and I dropped a little drop shot worm over the side of the boat next to a very shallow patch of weeds -- no more than 4 feet deep on the outside edge, and finally got a decent fish!

Still, we were committed to the location change, so we put the boat on the trailer, and headed to Larabees Point, across from Ti. The weed bed we thought would be protected from the south wind wasn't nearly as protected as we had hoped, because once out of the narrow south end of the lake, it was evident that the wind was more southwest than south. Still, it was fishable as long as we stayed in the weeds rather than trying to work the outside edge. After not too much experimenting, we started flipping Ozmos in the heavy milfoil, as we let the breeze push us along. Not 10 minutes apart, we each got a fish big enough to make the day worthwhile.

We caught a few more bass (nothing else over 2 pounds or so) off that pattern before we decided that we'd had enough wind for one day. We both really wanted to get a shot at the same weedbed the next day with a lot less wind, so we could properly dissect it. The weather forecast though was calling for a 20 degree drop in the high temp and a strong wind, shifting to the north. We took solace in the fact that they are so rarely even close to right.

Naturally, we woke the next morning to cooler, but only mildly so, temps and a continued, but noticeably gentler, southerly breeze. The front hadn't yet arrived, much less passed, but we had no idea how long these seemingly perfect, pre-frontal conditions would last. We drove from Sportsman's Cottages in Addison back down to Larabee's and got the boat in the water about 7:45, then made a quick trip to the point we'd fished the previous day, except we started well outside of it. Within about 15 minutes, Tom and his big ugly spinnerbait started catching toothy critters. This was the biggest of 3 or 4 he got in the first half hour or so. Meanwhile, I picked up a somewhat smaller and more natural looking single spin (shad skirt with a single cold blade, half ounce, as compared to his one ounce "Greg's Parrot") and got a couple pound-and-a-quarter class largemouth on that. But then a nasty old northern hit my bait by the blade and stretched the split ring out, pulling the blade right off the ball bearing swivel. So I picked up the flipping stick and moved into the heavy weeds.

It was another 15 minutes before I got the 1st decent bass of the day, flipping the Ozmo into milfoil just a bit deeper than we'd found them the day before -- maybe 8 feet or so.

After I got 4 or 5 in a row, Tom finally put his spinnerbait down and got in on the action. To save space, I won't bother putting in a dozen or so pictures of us with bass in the 2 to 3 pound range, each with a 3/4oz. slip sinker, 3/0 Texposer and green pumpkin Ozmo in its face. Just imagine the last two repeated over and over. As all this action was going on, the gentle breeze turned to pretty much a dead calm.

When the action seemed to slow a bit, we moved to the outer edge of the weeds in 10 to 12 feet of water, and switched to light casting rods rigged with the same bait, but on 10 pound mono with a 3/16 oz slip sinker. In some places along that weedbed, the bass seemed thick on the outside edge, and we'd catch 6 or 7 in as many casts.

Then Tom put down the freak bait and picked up his spinnerbait again. Bam! he got this fatty on his first cast.

And on the next cast, he got this chain pickerel. You can see pretty clearly in this photo why I call his Toothy Critter Gitter the 'big ugly thing'. But he hasn't thrown any other spinnerbait in about 4 years, and he catches the snot out of 'em with that thing -- largemouth, smallmouth, pike, pickerel, muskies -- it doesn't matter, Tom's got that thing tied on his spinnerbait rod.

Just to prove that normal looking spinnerbaits work too, I had to throw one and catch a fish or two on it. I just love the vibes of a single spin compared to a tandem. Both spinnerbaits seemed to get bit a time or two in the first few times we threw them at any point, then they would slow down until we moved a hundred feet or so down the weedline.