Don Lehman

Few anglers spend as much time fishing the depths of Lake George as Burke Collins. Year-round, he is fishing through the ice or from his kayak, and he’s caught hundreds and hundreds of lake trout, many topping 30 inches.
What Collins has only seen a few of, though, are the landlocked Atlantic salmon that are stocked by the thousands in the lake each year.
“I’ve caught four or five the past two years,” he said.

Summer 2025 is not turning out to be the greatest season weather-wise for New York’s trout stream anglers.
Spring brought unprecedented rain in parts of the state, leaving many streams too high and unfishable well into May. The faucets all but turned off by mid June, bringing drought to parts of the state and dropping streams to record low levels amid an unusually hot summer.

The Schroon River, a tributary of the Hudson River in the southern Adirondacks, has long offered solid trout fishing, with the occasional landlocked Atlantic salmon appearing in the river from Schroon Lake.
In early May this year though, the Schroon River began yielding big salmon after big salmon, numerous fish approaching 8 pounds, drawing anglers from around the Northeast for what had become an unusual fishing opportunity. That opportunity came courtesy of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service fish hatcheries in Vermont.

Are wild lake trout that have become more prevalent in New York’s Lake Champlain better able to escape predation by sea lamprey? Some anglers and fisheries experts think that is the case, and with lake trout stocking on Champlain coming to an end after this year, lamprey wound rates will be closely watched to see if it can be confirmed.
Charter Boat Captain Mick Maynard, who operates Lake Champlain Fishing Charters in Chazy, has fished Champlain for the better part of five decades, and said he has noticed fewer lamprey wounds on wild lakers than stocked fish.