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Home › Waters › Vermont › Lake Champlain
Lake · Champlain Valley · Vermont

Lake Champlain Fishing Guides

A hundred and twenty miles of water between the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks, and one of the best mixed-species fisheries in the country.

Conifers crowding a rocky point on a clear northern lake
Gauge location. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Guides on the Lake Champlain

Claimed profiles take booking requests. Unclaimed profiles are built from public records so the river is never empty; the guide can claim or remove one any time.

Order on this page: premium and outfitter plans first (labelled Premium placement), then claimed free profiles, then unclaimed — one published price, no bidding for position. How placement works

About the Lake Champlain

Lake Champlain runs a hundred and twenty miles between Vermont and New York, with Quebec at the top end, and it is one of the great mixed fisheries of North America. It has deep cold basins, enormous shallow weedy bays, rocky islands, river mouths and everything in between, which is why it holds so many species and supports so many different kinds of fishing.

Smallmouth bass are what the lake is best known for nationally. The rock, the drop-offs and the island shoals produce them in numbers and size that have made Champlain a regular stop on national tournament circuits. Largemouth are equally strong in the weedy bays, and it is genuinely a lake where you can choose which species to chase on a given morning.

The coldwater fishery is serious in its own right, with lake trout and landlocked Atlantic salmon in the deeper northern and central basins. Walleye, northern pike, yellow perch and chain pickerel fill out a species list that few lakes anywhere can match.

Ice fishing is a major season, particularly in the shallower bays, and the perch and pike fishing through the ice is excellent when the lake makes it.

The lake is large enough to be dangerous. It builds serious water in a north or south blow, and the fetch through the broad lake is long.

The gauge below reports both lake level and water temperature at Burlington. Champlain level swings meaningfully with snowmelt and rain, and the temperature reading is the practical guide to which of the lake several fisheries is currently on.

This water needs a real photo

The photo at the top of this page is not Lake Champlain.

It is a regional stand-in, honestly captioned but generic — we will not put a name to a river we cannot prove. Send us a photograph you took here and it replaces the stand-in, with your credit on it.

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  • You confirm that you took the photo yourself, that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that anyone recognisable in it (or a parent or guardian, if they are under 18) is happy for it to appear here.
  • Credit is printed beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, using the credit name you give us. Leave it blank and we use your name; write “Anonymous” for no name. Your email address is never published.
  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

Pool right now

93.36ft NAVD88
  • 24 hours-0.02 ft → steady
  • Water temperature52 F

Reading taken 1h ago at USGS 04294500, LAKE CHAMPLAIN AT BURLINGTON, VT. Elevation is the surface of the lake above the survey datum, not depth. Source.

Fished this water? Add a photo

Reviewed by hand before it appears. Pick the water, not the spot — we never publish exact locations.

Never published. We use it only if we need to ask about the photo.

Posting to Lake Champlain.

JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 12 MB. We resize it and strip the location data out of the file.

The name shown under the photo. Leave blank to stay anonymous.

Reader photo license v1.0 — the short version:

  • You grant Guided Floats, LLC a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, resize and crop your photo on guidedfloats.com and in GuidedFloats’ own social posts and apps. You keep the copyright and can use the photo anywhere else.
  • You confirm that you took the photo yourself, that publishing it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that anyone recognisable in it (or a parent or guardian, if they are under 18) is happy for it to appear here.
  • Credit is printed beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, using the credit name you give us. Leave it blank and we use your name; write “Anonymous” for no name. Your email address is never published.
  • Withdrawing is one email to hello@guidedfloats.com naming the photo. It comes off the site within 7 days.
Read the full license

Version 1.0, dated 6 September 2026. Applies to every photograph submitted to GuidedFloats through the contact form, a species page, or the community board.

1. What you give us

By ticking the box on the form you grant Guided Floats, LLC (“GuidedFloats”, “we”) a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, copy, resize, crop and display your photograph on guidedfloats.com, in GuidedFloats’ own social media accounts and mobile apps, and in material that promotes the site itself, in connection with the fish, water or community feature you sent it in for. The license lasts until you withdraw it (section 4).

You keep the copyright. The license is not exclusive, so you can use the photo anywhere else and license it to anyone else. We will not sell your photo, license it on to anyone else on its own, or use it in paid advertising for a third party.

2. What you confirm

You confirm that you took the photograph yourself (or otherwise own the rights to it), that you have the right to grant this license, and that publishing the photo does not infringe anyone else’s copyright, privacy or other rights.

If any person is recognisable in the photo, you confirm that they have agreed to its being published here, and that a parent or guardian has agreed on behalf of anyone under 18. Please do not send photographs of other people’s catches, screenshots, or pictures copied from other websites or social media.

3. Credit

We print the credit name you give us beside the photo wherever it appears on the site, and record it as the photo’s creator in the page’s structured data. If you leave the credit blank we use the name you gave us on the form. Write “Anonymous” if you prefer no name at all. Your email address, phone number and the exact spot the photo was taken are never published.

4. Withdrawing the license

You can withdraw the license at any time by emailing hello@guidedfloats.com, or by using the contact form, and telling us which photo you mean. We will remove the photo from guidedfloats.com within 7 days of receiving your message and stop using it in anything new. Copies that are already outside our control — search-engine caches, social posts that have already gone out, printed material already produced — may take longer to disappear or may not be recallable, and we are not responsible for those.

5. What we may do

We choose which photos to publish and may decline any submission without giving a reason. We may crop, resize, sharpen or colour-correct a photo for display, and we may remove a photo at any time. We will not alter a photo in a way that misrepresents the fish, the water or you.

6. Your details

We keep your name, email address, the credit name, the water and date you gave us, and the network address the submission came from, with the submission record, as our evidence of this license. We hold that record for as long as the photo is published and for the retention period described in our privacy policy. Location data that your camera or phone embedded in the file is removed before the photo is published.

7. Versions

The version of this license you accepted is stored with your submission and printed with the photo. A later version does not apply to a photo you have already sent unless you agree to it.

Lake level alert

Tell me when the pool at Lake Champlain ft (NAVD88)

Now: 93.36 ft pool elevation, read 5:00 am CST, Mon Nov 2, 2026 (USGS 04294500, LAKE CHAMPLAIN AT BURLINGTON, VT).

We never use this address for anything else and never share it. See the privacy policy.

Access

Burlington and Shelburne Bay: ramps and services on the Vermont shore.
Malletts Bay and St Albans Bay: sheltered northern access.
Grand Isle and North Hero: island access to the broad lake.
Vermont state park ramps are spread along the eastern shore.
The New York shore has its own extensive access and separate regulations.
Ice access in winter is from the bays rather than the broad lake.
Note: a very large lake that builds dangerous water quickly. Watch the forecast.

Seasons

Winter: perch and pike through the ice in the bays, and smelt when they run.
Spring: salmon and lake trout near the surface, then the bass spawn in the bays.
Summer: smallmouth on the shoals, largemouth in the weeds, deep trout offshore.
Fall: the best smallmouth of the year and the coldwater fish shallow again.

From the water

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Questions

What species can you catch on the Lake Champlain?

Anglers target Chain Pickerel, Lake Trout, Landlocked Salmon, Largemouth Bass, Northern Pike, Smallmouth Bass, Walleye, Yellow Perch on the Lake Champlain in Vermont.

Are there fishing guides on the Lake Champlain?

GuidedFloats lists 1 guide and outfitters on the Lake Champlain. Claimed profiles accept booking requests; unclaimed profiles are built from public records and link to the business.

Where can you access the Lake Champlain?

Burlington and Shelburne Bay: ramps and services on the Vermont shore. Malletts Bay and St Albans Bay: sheltered northern access. Grand Isle and North Hero: island access to the broad lake. Vermont state park ramps are spread along the eastern shore. The New York shore has its own extensive access and separate regulations. Ice access in winter is from the bays rather than the broad lake. Note: a very large lake that builds dangerous water quickly. Watch the forecast.

When is the best time to fish the Lake Champlain?

Winter: perch and pike through the ice in the bays, and smelt when they run. Spring: salmon and lake trout near the surface, then the bass spawn in the bays. Summer: smallmouth on the shoals, largemouth in the weeds, deep trout offshore. Fall: the best smallmouth of the year and the coldwater fish shallow again.

Where are the fishing regulations for the Lake Champlain?

Regulations change by season and section. Read the current rules on the Vermont agency site: https://vtfishandwildlife.com/fish/fishing-regulations