If anybody hasn’t heard of the SMB prowess that is Sturgeon Bay, let me fill you in. The pre-spawn bite on the Door County peninsula is epic, for a the lack of a more fitting term. Fish pushing 8.5 lbs!
We were slated to head out to the bay earlier in June, and our timing was just a little off. We caught the bass just starting to get onto the beds or just getting ready to leave. Thus a lot of those big bass lose precious pounds from spawn. Heck, a lot of the big female Smallies are so full of spawn they are actually unable to swim horizontally and their heads stick up in the air while their derrière is south facing.
At any rate, there wasn’t a chance I was going to pass up the opportunity to dive in some very clear, very bass filled waters. We found a rock complex sticking out a few hundred yards from the tip of an island. It was a perfect piece of structure, rock and sand mix with the top being in 6 feet and falling into deep water. The sand and rock mix would offer spawning bass a place to do their thing, but the abundance of rocks and change of depth would also attract pre-spawn fish.
Upon entering the water, the current was pretty shocking. It was a struggle to move into it, and required a fair amount of effort to just remain still. The wind was coming off shore at only 5-9 mph, and the surface was >1, so it was very interesting to find such a significant current.
It took me a little bit to find a fish on my first dive because I was primarily staying out on sand flats with little rock. I had James pick me up and haul me over to a shallower area with a little more rock. Bingo! I plopped down within yards of fish. After swimming around a rock sand random mixture I hit a 1-2 foot depth change which was ringed with rocks. The top was mostly rock while there was a little more sand on the bottom. The vast majority of the fish I saw were using this small rock break, sometimes being only a 1 foot depth change, as a travel route.
The bass on video when I was illustrating this point kind of moved straight perpendicular to it…and that’s because there was a 180 lb air breathing dude chasing after him!
I then stumbled upon a male SMB guarding the bed. I stayed back, as I didn’t want to interfere with his guard duties, and let a plethora of Gobies get a free meal.
As a side note, Gobies everywhere in the rocks! The majority of them are 1-3 inches long but I did see a few that would go about 6-7 inches. The reason I mention Gobies is because they are known to clear out an unguarded SMB nest in under 15 minutes, hence the reason I stayed back.
After watching for a few minutes, I realized it wasn’t guarding the nest, rather it was making it. I decided to get up close and personal, and he didn’t seem to care about me in slightest. Rather he went about his business with a little mix of curiosity.
At multiple times he would come up and try to bump to camera with his nose. I even stuck out my finger gave it a wiggle and he tried to pounce on it! Unfortunately, I didn’t get it on film!
When watching the bass, he would stay within 20 yards of his bedding site, but always would return to the bed. SMB often will create multiple nests, with 50% of their sites failing. Bigger Male bass will often create bigger beds, and have better evolutionary fitness.
Now we decided, as it wouldn’t hurt the bass, to have a little fun. I beckoned James and Adam over, as they peppered the area with tubes. On numerous occasions the bass would try to attack the tube but it would either sit on the bottom too long or it would pop up too erratically from the bottom and bass couldn’t find it.
Eventually I took things into my own hands…literally. I grabbed the line with about a foot or two in front of the tube, gave it a jiggle, the bass came over and engulfed it! I tried to lay the screws to him but we’ll need to work on that aspect of my underwater fishing game.
I came up with a few main points which I believe will help you become a better bass fisherman, especially pertaining to the pre-spawn time frame.
1. James and Adam would often fish their tube too fast. It would come up and down off the bottom erratically, and very quickly. A SMB on the fringe of their range, would see the tube, shoot over and then loose it in the rocks. The bait would sit too long and would come off the bottom too quickly and it would lose interest. I suggest using the lightest amount of weight you can precisely fish, and let the tube do more time gently floating off the bottom. Slowly falling down, and coming back up. The bass seemed to feed up, even though you would think they would do some heavy feeding on the Gobies. The Whitefish we caught through the ice on IDO TV with Paul Delany would even be vertically facing down looking for Gobies in the rocks.
2. Find small changes in depth and bottom substrate. Boat control is imperative, because as I said, the first dive I did there was hardly a bass around and as soon as we hit that rock depth change, bass everywhere! It doesn’t have to be a 5 foot hard break even, all it was in this case was a foot or two! It makes a big difference!
The last thing pertains more so to shooting underwater video. I am using a GOPRO Hero 3 Black in this video and you can see often times he video goes from a real green look, to an accurate more blue look. This has to do with the White Balance or WB, and how the camera determines what color is a neutral white. I found out there actually is a way to pre-set your WB in the HERO 3 Black! Initially, I thought it was only going to be a feature found in the newer Hero 3+.
I updated the camera, turned on PROTUNE in the capture settings, went to white balance and found a few options for setting a WB. My two immediate choices were 5500K and Camera RAW. 5500k would be a WB which would often make a bluebird day look about accurate. Camera RAW is a very flat look, with little contrast and saturation.
I ended up picking Camera RAW after doing a side by side test, for my applications. It allowed us to manipulate the footage while editing, by color correcting it to a more accurate look.
If you just want to shoot underwater video and not mess around with post processing, I suggest shooting in 5500K, it will give you a solid overall look in shallow clear water!
Next time you hear from me will be from near my cabin in Cass County. I had some awesome finds, and found some post spawn Smallies and LMB’s relating to both rock and weed structure!
Ben
