Lowell Secures First Victory as a Boater

kristopherbmartin
Jun 28
3 min read

June 22, 2025

Lowell and White Secure Victory With LunkerLargemouth

Champlain Valley B.A.S.S. Club, 2025 Angler-of-the-Year Series #1

SHOREHAM – Boater John Lowell and co-angler Jim White made good use of the Z-Man Chatterbait Sunday, earning the victory in the Champlain Valley B.A.S.S. Club’s first Angler-of-the-Year tournament. The pair hoisted 17.81 pounds of Lake Champlain bass to the scale with White’s five-pound lunker largemouth anchoring their team’s bag.

“My plan was to run north and hit few rocky points to start the day and then pick our way back south,” Lowell said. “We got in to them early on the chatterbait, but it wasn’t until Jim scored that big one that I was sure I’d made the right choice.”

The team of Jason Roberts and Garrett Sicely got themselves on a decent frog bite to take second place with a total of 14.95 pounds with the team of Jacob Nichols and club guest Ron Kristoff rounding out the top three with 13.44

A former club champion as a co-angler (yes, that’s possible), this is Lowell’s first year competing as a boater and having White - a five-time club champion playing Sundance Kid to Lowell’s Butch Cassidy certainly didn’t hurt. With Lowell now competing as a boater, he’s learning just how difficult things can be when you’re the one making the decisions.

“You’ve definitely got way more responsibility when you’re on the front of the boat,” Lowell said. “You’ve got to worry about boat positioning, safety on the water and in the boat in addition to being the guy who has to make all the little decisions. There’s also a lot more preparation that comes with being a boater. You end up being concerned about towing, gas and boat maintenance as well as going fishing. As a co-angler, your main focus is catching fish and you don’t think too much about the other stuff. It’s been a change for sure, but there are days when you have a lot more questions than answers now.”

“I was more than comfortable fishing out of the back of John’s boat – Let’s face it, I’m pretty familiar with it seeing that it used to be mine,” White jokingly said. “We picked up the big fish around 9:30 in the morning after striking out at the first few places we stopped at.”

It’s not too often that a former club champion volunteers to check his ego at the door in order fill a co-angler seat, but in White’s case he looks forward to filling that seat once in a while.

“It’s kinda’ nice not having to be the one making all the decisions,” White said. “John would ask a question and I’d remind him that he was the boater and he was the one to make the decisions not me. With it being a team tournament, we did confer at times but I have to admit that being focused solely on fishing is quite enjoyable.”

While the southern end of Lake Champlain is familiar to most club members, all of them know that it can be fickle at times too. By mid-June, it is generally agreed that the spawn is mostly over, and with it, comes a week or so of lethargy before the post-spawn feeding binge takes off for a couple of weeks before the bass head to their summer areas to avoid the heat. This year, with excessive rain in the month of June, they have been difficult to pattern consistently – another thing new boaters have to deal with.

“The one thing I’ve learned quickly is that you don’t leave good fish to find other fish,” Lowell said. “You can’t stick around for dinks (little fish) though. When you get the feeling to move, it’s your intuition telling you something. You don’t want to waste too much time in one spot when you should have other areas that you can rotate through and find active biters. Sometimes the water just doesn’t look right, be it clarity, temperature or lacking forage. You’ve got to be willing to move in order to keep swinging.”

The Champlain Valley B.A.S.S. Club heads to Lake Dunmore on June 26, from 3:30PM-7:30PM for its second Angler-of-the-Year tournament and the first of six four-hour evening dips on the schedule.

Totals for Champlain Valley B.A.S.S. Series AOY #1

Sunday, June 22, 2025 @Larrabees Point, Lake Champlain6:30AM-2:30PM

First - John Lowell/ Jim White 17.81 (Chatterbait)

Second - Jason Roberts/ Garrett Sicely 14.95 (Frog)

Third - Jacob Nichols/ (Guest) Ron Kristoff 13.44 (Senko)

4 - Zach Patch/ (Guest) Tony 12.68

5 - Brian Dooley/ David Monte 12.12

6 - Zach McNaughton/ Brian Austin 11.89

7 - Greg Decell/ John Laramie 9.02

8 - Olivia Baroffio/ empty seat 6.55

9 - Kris Martin/ Dennis Brownfield 6.49

Total Fish – 39