On April 25, on the waters of Lake Champlain that straddles the border of New York and Vermont, angler Roy Gangloff landed the fish of a lifetime: a massive northern-strain largemouth bass weighing 7 pounds, 13 ounces — the largest bass an experienced biologist has seen on the massive lake in nearly three decades.
Gangloff, an avid multi-species angler, has spent a lifetime fishing the dynamic, 120-mile-long, 278,480-acre lake that stretches north to south along the state border. His previous personal best largemouth from Champlain weighed a respectable 6 pounds, 12 ounces. Fish of this size are rare in northern latitudes, where short growing seasons and harsh winters slow their growth compared to their southern counterparts. While a 7-pound bass might be common in warmer states, in northern waters, it represents decades of survival and growth.
I was out fishing that day with my friend Shawn P. Good, a Vermont fisheries biologist and passionate angler. I first met Good in 2022 while filming a YouTube series, and he quickly proved himself to be one of “us” — a fisherman first, as he put it, before becoming a scientist. His passion for fishing led to a career in biology, and I’ve come to admire the hard work biologists like him do behind the scenes to support our fisheries.
“Champlain is known to be an incredibly prolific and productive fishery — one of the best in the country,” Good said. “But the 40 miles of lake south of the bridge to New York in Addison, Vermont, is a different animal altogether.
“The adjacent low-lying farmland and fertile soils of the Champlain Valley make this end of the lake the polar opposite of what you see up north. It’s shallow, heavily vegetated, and nutrient-rich, and the water is perpetually stained.”
As we fished, catching a few 3- to 5-pound Champlain bass on the new Biwaa 6-inch Kapsiz HD swimbaits, Good received a text from Gangloff:
“I just got a 7-12. This is not a typo. 7-12.”
We met up with him to help document the catch, and the Bubba scale confirmed the weight: 7 pounds, 13 ounces; the fish measured 22.5 inches long with an 18-inch girth.
Gangloff had been throwing a lipless crankbait — likely an original 1/2-ounce Rat-L-Trap in Chartreuse Shiner — in shallow water, under 10 feet deep, in a small bay in the southern portion of the lake.
It was the biggest largemouth bass Good had seen in his 28-year career. He collected a spine sample for aging back at the lab. Of the tens of thousands of bass he’s handled on Champlain, this was the closest he’s seen to the elusive 8-pound mark.
He estimates the fish to be between 15 and 20 years old — an incredible age in a region where largemouths rarely reach double digits in weight.
If you haven’t made the trip to this special corner of the United States to fish Lake Champlain, it’s time you did. Those of you who live nearby are fortunate — and you should know that one of your own is working hard to ensure these experiences continue for generations to come.
“You won’t see clear water here. But these traits make the south lake one of the best places for a true giant,” Good said. “There’s endless habitat — from channel drops, deep weed lines, and vast expanses of shallow vegetation like bulrushes, cattails, pads, milfoil, and eelgrass, to ledges, bluff walls, rocky points, and shale shorelines.
“This habitat supports an enormous forage base of perch, shiners, sunfish, shad, and alewife. And while we rarely see fish like this coming out of Champlain, Roy’s fish really shows off what the lake is capable of producing.
“The potential and possibility are always there — it’s just such a huge lake with literally millions of places for them to be and hide.”
Once again, congratulations to Roy Gangloff on a true fish of a lifetime, and thank you for sharing the moment with us. And hats off to Shawn Good for his decades of dedication to managing one of the top 10 bass fisheries in the world.
