CHITTENDEN RESERVOIR/CHITTENDEN, VT – As a late addition to the boater group, Casey Baroffio hit the water with mixed emotions. Fortunately for him and his last minute coangler Jacob Patch the duo managed to turn their fortune from tin to gold dropping 11.17 pounds of bass on the scale to take Round #2 of the 2023 Rutland B.A.S.S. Angler-of-the-Year Series. Jacob Patch corralled an extra point with his 3.2-pound lunker smallmouth to anchor the their bag.
Baroffio was originally slated to fish as a coangler with Kris Martin but the deck was shuffled to allow new member Nick Draper to fish with Martin and Baroffio instead hauled his boat to fish with Jacob Patch as his coangler. Patch’s boat was in the shop being prepared to go to the St. Lawrence/1,000 Islands making him unable to compete as a boater.
These things happen, and it highlights the importance of flexibility among anglers. Baroffio did admit that he had done some light pre-fishing of the reservoir the previous week but left with a better understanding of why it can be so difficult to find winning fish at Chittenden.
“I marked a few likely spots earlier in the week where I thought bigger fish might be, but I only caught a few dinks,” Baroffio said. “I spent about four hours graphing some stuff, caught a few but knew that big fish were going to be hard to come by.”
Once regarded as a great place to target largemouth bass, Chittenden Reservoir has seen smallmouth bass become more prevalent as well as the abundant reserve of walleye that tend to roam its depths. It’s not uncommon to pop a few walleye in shallow water when fishing for bass there.
“We ended up catching fish on nearly everything we threw,” Baroffio said. “Wacky-rig, drop-shot, Chatterbait, spinnerbait and even a few on a Carolina-Rig. We focused on a section of the res that I thought held a better concentration of bigger fish. We weeded through a ton of smaller fish like most everyone else, but managed to find a few above-average fish mixed in.”
The team of Jason Roberts and Bruce Staples put 10.85 pounds on the scale to secure second-place with Roberts’ 3.25-pound largemouth securing an extra lunker point for him in the AOY race.
“The smallies were loving the Zara Spook Junior but they kept missing it,” Roberts said. “The first one we got never jumped after coming up for it and I thought it may have been a largemouth. Caught the rest on of them, including our lunker on “old reliable” – the Zoom Super Fluke. We picked up nearly all of our fish shallow around weeds – that was key. Isolated weed clumps seemed to be the best.”
Rounding out the top-three, Zach Patch and his brother Anthony had a solid showing with 9.86 pounds, making good on Patch’s prediction that he’d do well on his home waterbody.
“Walking baits, jerkbaits, and weedless drop-shot worms worked well for us,” Zach Patch said. “We saw a lot of nice fish on sonar but they didn’t want much to do with anything. I caught a 22-inch largemouth a couple days before the tournament while prefishing, but it only weighed 3.5 pounds. I almost think there may have been a second spawn because of the cold, dark spring we had. That fish looked like it had just finished laying eggs.”
It’s definitely been tough to pattern fish early this year.
Angler-of-the-Year #2, Chittenden final Results
Casey Baroffio and Jacob Patch 11.17lbs. (C. Baroffio, 100 points, Jacob Patch, 101 points)
Jason Roberts and Bruce Staples 10.85lbs. (Roberts, 98 points, B. Staples 97 points)
Zach Patch and Anthony Patch 9.86lbs. (Z. Patch, 95 points. 0 points awarded to A. Patch – club guest)
Kris Martin and Nick Draper 9.10lbs. (Martin, Draper, 94 points each)
Brian Austin and Brian Dooley 7.83. (Austin, Dooley, 93 points each)
Jacob Nichols and Dylan Stowe 7.74lbs. (Nichols, Stowe, 92 points each)
Eddie “Potato” Staples and Olivia Baroffio 7.55lbs. (E. Staples, O.Baroffio 91 points each)
Erik Rasmussen and Don Adams 5.26lbs. (Rasmussen, Adams, 90 points each)
Jim White and Bryan Godda 4.92lbs. (White, Godda, 89 points each)
Hunter Skaza and Zachary McNaughton 3.22lbs. (Skaza, McNaughton, 88 points each)
Greg DeCell and Finn Payne 3.15lbs. (DeCell, Payne, 87 points each)
Jeff Patch and Andy Christofaris 3.02lbs. (Jeff Patch, Christofaris 86 points each)
Lunker Largemouth: Jason Roberts, 3.25lbs.
Lunker Smallmouth: Jacob Patch, 3.20lbs.
The next stop for the club will be July 15, 2023 from 6AM-2PM at Shelburne Bay, Lake Champlain.
Guests and new members are welcome and encouraged to register/join at www.rutlandbassclub.com