PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. — You might think Florida’s Lake Okeechobee would be Scott Martin’s favorite place to bass fish. It’s the lake he grew up on, learning from his Bass Fishing Hall of Fame father, Roland, and where he won the Bassmaster Open in February this year.
And you might think Lake Fork would be Lee Livesay’s favorite place to bass fish. It’s where he guided for years and where he’s won two of his four Bassmaster Elite Series treasured blue trophies.
However, Martin, Livesay and 13 other Elite Series anglers listed Lake Champlain as their favorite place to fish in the 2024 B.A.S.S. media guide, making it easily the top selection of the 103 anglers polled before the season began. If anything, that number may have increased if another vote was taken this week after the Tackle Warehouse Bassmaster Elite at Lake Champlain.
“First of all, the beauty,” said Martin, while gazing across the lake and the mountains surrounding it. “I mean look at this. The scenery is unbelievable. Living in Florida, it’s flat.
“You’ve got top tier smallmouth and largemouth fishing here. And there’s so many ways to catch them, from going up in the swamp and throwing a frog to getting out in 30 feet of water and catching smallmouth on drop shots to everything in between. It’s special.”
Livesay echoed those thoughts, saying, “Champlain is my favorite place to fish because of the diversity. You’ve got guys catching them in 150 feet of water, suspended. You’ve got (Chris) Zaldain catching them on glide baits for largemouth. You can catch them in the grass Chatterbaiting for smallmouth. You’ve got guys flipping grass for largemouth. You can catch ‘emfrogging, punching, anything and everything in between. Finesse or power, up and down the lake, north to south.
“That’s why I like Champlain, the diversity for sure, and it’s pretty.”
Martin’s first Lake Champlain experience didn’t come in a bass tournament. In September 1997, Roland Martin won the Bassmaster Vermont Top 100 here, and a new bass boat was among the prizes, as it was much of the time in those days.
“He tried to sell it because he didn’t want to take it all the way back to Florida,” Martin recalled. “No one wanted a bass boat. They all wanted walleye boats or lake boats. So he has to leave it here. He calls me and asks me to come to New York and bring the boat back.”
Scott, 22 years old at the time, was willing to do that, especially if Roland didn’t mind him putting the new boat in the water and fishing from it a bit.
“The very first smallmouth bass I ever caught in my life was right here on this lake,” Martin said.
Brandon Lester is another one of the Elite Series anglers you might guess would list a more southern locale as his favorite place to bass fish. The Fayetteville, Tenn., pro, who won an Elite Series tournament on a Tennessee River impoundment at Pickwick Lake in 2022 and a Bassmaster Open at Florida’s Kissimmee Chain of Lakes the same year, likes Champlain best of all.
“It’s everything bass fishing should be,” Lester said. “It’s got everything that you want to do. If you want to ‘Scope them out there in the middle, if you want to fish the bank, if you want to flip grass, if you want to frog, it’s got everything a bass fisherman could possibly like.”
Lester finished 11th Sunday, missing the top 10 by four ounces. Most importantly, it was mission accomplished for him. He’s now 20th in Progressive Angler of the Year points, safely inside the top 40 cut for Bassmaster Classic qualification with only one tournament remaining this season.
“I chose to fish for smallmouth here this week because my goal was to make the top 20 and try to solidify my spot in the Classic so I wouldn’t have to worry about that at the St. Lawrence. But I have largemouth fished here in the past, and the largemouth fishing is phenomenal here too.
“It’s beautiful country, a beautiful lake and it’s full of fish – I mean FULL of fish!”
In perusing the media guide at all of the 103 Elite Series anglers’ choices of favorite places to fish, the answers were, as you might expect, wide-ranging, from the Florida Keys (Steve Kennedy) to Japan’s Lake Kawaguchi (Kyoya Fujita). However, while Lake Champlain easily topped the tally, other New York waters were among the leaders, like the St. Lawrence River (seven anglers), Lake Ontario (six anglers) and just New York in general (five anglers).
Clearly, the state of New York is the favorite place for the Elite Series pros to be, especially in the month of August.
