A Day on Lake St. Clair



Nick Neves took me out on Lake St. Clair in his new Legend bass boat today to try and catch a couple world famous LSC smallies.  We launched his boat from a Marina near Memorial Park at 6:30 am.  It was extremely foggy on the lake and visibilty was limited to 20 yards.  It's hard to describe but if I moved my arm up and down quickly, It would get wet.   The water temperature was 59-61 degrees and a little milky.

We started the morning throwing lipless crankbaits in 3-5 ft of water but we couldn't get a bite.  Nick started to move us into deeper water, looking for weeds on his Lowrance.  When we got in about 6-8 ft of water there was good weed growth.  I switched to a green tube and immediately caught our first bass.  It was a dinky largemouth! BOO!! 

A couple of casts later I popped my tube off a weed and it was smoked.  I set the hook aggressively and buttoned a huge smallie.  It swirled at the surface but never jumped, and came in pretty easily.  The smallmouth bass weighed in at 4 pounds 10 ounces(Pictured above).  A couple of minutes later Nick hooked into a nice 3.5 pound smallie with a Snack Daddy tube.  We decided to have a head to head tournament and the loser buys lunch.  We fished the area for about 30 more minutes and we both caught 2 more keepers but nothing huge. 

Nick motored us north a little ways looking for more weeds on his Lowrance.  When he'd find weeds we  would stop and fish.  We picked up a couple smallies here and there but we could never find the mother load.  After 3 hours I had three bass weighing 10 pounds and Nick had 2 bass weighing 6 pounds.  The fog was really tough to fish in.

We had to make a short trip back to the ramp to move Nicks truck because another boater said, "Your trucks parked in a no parking zone and it's going to get towed."  After we moved his truck we slowly motored back into the fog and started fishing close to the launch.  We targeted sea walls and grass patches away from the sea walls.  We stated to catch bass left and right, but they were all largemouth.  I caught a really nice largehead off the sea wall that weighed 4 pounds, giving me a huge lead.  Nick wanted to find the mother load of smallies so we ran all the way down to the Detroit River, stopping and fishing riprap along the way.  We found a couple smallies on beds but nothing amazing. 

It was getting close to 1:00 pm and we hadn't caught a bass in 2 hours so we ran all the back to the weed beds we caught bass on earlier.  It was amazing for the next hour!  We were catching smallies and largemouth on every other cast.  I made 6 casts in a row towards a seawall and I caught 6 largemouth that weighed 2.5 pounds apiece.  My total was up to 16 pounds, 10 ounces.  Nick made a huge comeback by catching a 4 pound 3 ounce smallie and a 3 pound 6 ounce smallie on back-to-back casts.  He was setting at 16 pounds even. 

With 10 minutes to go before the tournaments ending time (2:00 pm) I set my hook on the fattest smallie I've ever caught.  It was only a 17.5-inch fish but it weighed 4 pounds.  I now had 17 lbs, 5 ounces.  On cue Nick set the hook on another bass that ended up weighing 3 pounds.  It was down to ounces....  Nick's last bass put him at 17 pounds, 4 ounces.  I brought home the victory, and lunch, winning by 1 ounce.  The key to my success was using 6 lb Gamma Edge which helped me get more bites. 

On the day we boated 20-25 bass apiece and our best 5 bass weighed 20 pounds, 1 ounce.  Lake St. Clair is a wonderful body of water.