This is Artificial Lure, your source for boots-on-the-ground, rod-in-hand insight from beautiful Lake Champlain, straddling Vermont and New York on this brisk Thursday, October 23rd, 2025.

We’re starting off with the weather—a classic late-October chill has rolled in overnight, with temps hovering in the upper 30s at daybreak, reaching for the high 40s by midday. Expect partly cloudy skies and a steady north-northwest breeze at 10 to 15 mph, making for a brisk but fishable day. Sunrise was at 7:18 a.m. and sunset will fall around 5:55 p.m. No tides to report here, since Champlain isn’t tidal, but water levels are a story—drought conditions have dropped the lake to historic autumn lows. According to the Mountain Times and Mainely Fly Fishing, you’ll find exposed shorelines and rocky flats you’d rarely see without a boat in other years.

With all that exposed structure, fish are bunched up tighter than a pickerel in a minnow trap. The “Lake Champlain Vermont/New York Fishing Report Daily” podcast confirms it’s been a banner week for smallmouth bass—think fat, bronze footballs schooling up on those rocky points and drop-offs. Some anglers are reporting catches of 20-30 smallmouth in a single outing, mostly in the 2-3 pound class with the occasional 4 to 5-pound hawg mixed in. Northern pike are active in weed beds and shallow bays, and there’s a steady walleye bite at first light and dusk, especially on the deeper edges near river mouths. Jumbo perch are also on the chew, with buckets being filled around the Inland Sea and Missisquoi Bay.

Lure-wise, this is the time to slow things way down. Those smallies are hammering Ned rigs, tube jigs in green pumpkin, and brown, as well as suspending jerkbaits worked along rocky ledges—especially just after sunrise. For pike, big white spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, and classic red-and-white spoons are your ticket. If you’re targeting walleye, dusk til dark is money on 3-4 inch soft plastics fished on a jighead, as well as blade baits bumped along the bottom. Perch are gorging on smaller offerings: try live fathead minnows or perch-patterned jigs under a slip bobber.

Don’t forget about the other players—trout are staging near cold tributary mouths, and, if you’re dedicated, there are still big lake-run salmon moving on cloudy, windy afternoons. Folks tossing blue and silver spoons at the Winooski or Ausable River outflows have picked up a few bruisers lately.

My top hot spots for today:

- Point Au Roche State Park on the New York side—shallow, rocky points and weedbeds are loaded with smallies and pike.
- The Inland Sea’s north shore, near North Hero, boasting piles of aggressive perch and pike in the remaining green weeds.
- The mouth of the Lamoille River in Malletts Bay is producing both walleye after sunset and some bonus smallmouth midday.

In these drought conditions, stealth, light line, and picking apart visible structure are key—a slow, methodical approach will get you bit when others blank.

That’ll do it for your Lake Champlain fishing fix today. Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget—subscribe for your daily dose from Artificial Lure. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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