C/R Bass Opener on Lake St. Clair

It was tough to leave home with the big Walleye running in the Menominee, but I had a trip on my “bucket list” planned for a long time to this Smallie Mecca. I drove down to Lansing and met my friend Dave. Next morning we drove over to Detroit and launched downtown on the lake. St Clair Surrounded by the Great Lakes – Lake Huron to the north and Lake Erie to the south, Lake St. Clair is dwarfed in size and legend. However, this lake of 430 square miles of surface area, is responsible for nearly 30% of the sport fishing catch of the Great Lakes and 50% of all the sport fishing that takes place in the Great Lakes. It has, over the years, gained a new respect amongst the ‘world’s’ anglers, making it the ‘little lake that could’.

Lake St. Clair boasts millions of smallmouth and largemouth bass that grow to an average of 3 lbs.. This large population of North Americas favorite game fish thrives by no accident or coincidence. The ‘lake’ flushes itself into Lake Erie an average of every seven days, taking as little as 2 days or as long as 30 days to push the flow from the St. Clair River, through the Detroit River.

Tubes are the preferred bait here to match the invasive Goby that flourishes and is LOVED by the Smallies…However I decided to try some new Poor Boys soft plastic Gobys on a 3/16oz swim jig head…Good Idea Tom!

We motored upwind in 2-3′ rollers in Dave’s 16.5′ Lund tiller until we found 9-10 fow…(Max depth in this huge lake is only about 15′)…drifting at about 0.4mph we dragged our soft baits, occasionally giving them a short lift…WHAM!!! The Smallies drilled those soft baits with wrist jarring strikes! We were doing the happy dance with incredible action, as we scored 4 bass on our first 6 casts.

Being the rod “junkie” that I am…I opted to bring a Duckett 7′ M/H casting rod and fixed a Lews Tournament Pro reel with 10# Sufix Siege mono to ply the zebra mussel plagued waters…actually the Gobies not only feed the bass and walleye , but eat lots of zeebs too!

The Sun burned through and the bite dropped off…I moved us deeper… finally finding 12 fow… Switched to Storm Wildeye Shad in a 4″ (1/2oz). Again, a first cast beauty, but several casts after resulted in bitten off tails…

Hmmmmm….I downsized my Shad to a 3″ , 1/4oz and got a solid hookup two casts later… Dave tied on a 1/4 oz silver rattletrap and connected also.

Sadly, my friend had an important appointment and we had to leave this bass fishing “Shangri la”. We were on the water for less than five hours and netted almost 20 Smallies.

I will say this is an incredible fishery and I WILL BE BACK!

I know we have quite a while before our upper Midwest lakes are ready but I hope this report will fire some of you up!

See ya on the water!