for a couple huge bedding bass. With a full moon approaching the
huge main lake females are moving into shallow water getting ready to
partner up with the males. There were monstrous females
everywhere! In one 50 yard section there were five 5-6 pounders
swimming around beds. We had the good fortune to actually get one
of these to bite. Rich threw a tube in front of a giant bass and
it ate it. The huge female was jumping and thrashing her head
trying
to get away but Rich landed her. She weighed in at 5 pounds 13
ounces. We caught a couple other big bass but they were males
between 3-4 pounds. Our total for the day was 18 pounds 3
ounces. The fishing on Paw Paw Lake will only get better.
Hopefully the bass can spawn before they decide to spray and kill the
weeds.May 28, 2007: It was beautiful today so Kelly asked me to take her on the river for a couple of hours. It was a bad decision because the river was an absolute zoo, and all of the animals were out. I was fishing in by Clementine's when a huge boat decided to back out of its slip without looking, and without anyone at the wheel. He backed right into my boat and transferred a huge line of plastic onto my boat. It looked like a cut in my fiberglass at first but after closer inspection the mark just rubbed off. It scared the #$%^ out of me because I thought his prop was going to chew up my boat. Oh, and get this. After I was backed into I sped my boat up to get out of the way. The Sheriff yells from his boat, "Hey, No Wake!" I had, and still have, no comment to that.
May 27, 2007: Today Mike Rappette and I fished Pipestone Lake for a little bit of money in a SMC
tournament. It was an extremely rainy day but very warm. We
targeted a couple big males that were guarding their nests to start the
morning. We caught each of those very easily with jigs and
Senkos. I tried a toad for a little while and had one huge bass
blow up on it but it came off. With four fish in the livewell we
decided to start flipping arrowheads with jigs. I caught a fat
4.5 pounder in the junk. It was a blast ripping it out of the
weeds with my heavy action flipping stick. I missed one more with
my jig but we did have about 15 pounds in the well. Shortly
after, Mike was casting a Senko around the inside weed edge when his
rod loaded up. He brought in a nice 3 pounder to bump our total to
about 17 pounds. Even with 17 pounds we still lost to Chuck
Nearpass and Scott Davis who weighed in 17 pounds 13 ounces.May 26, 2007: Kelly and I started out on Magician Lake for a couple of hours targeting smallies. It was windy and cloudy so their beds were tough to see. When we did find a bed, nobody was home. We changed our game plan and started looking for largemouths on beds. I didn't find any of those either. I did manage to find a couple fry guarders by boat docks. I let Kelly catch both of those. I only caught one other keeper bass fan casting a tube on a flat. It was pretty tough out there.
May 23, 2007: Kelly and I took a few hours out of our afternoon to enjoy the 90-degree weather and fish Paw Paw Lake. There were bass spawning all over the channels but my main goal today was to catch spawning smallies. The smallies in Paw Paw only spawn in very select spots that have a small gravel bottom. We caught 4 nice smallies that weighed between 2-4 pounds. They were extremely aggressive. The challenge was not letting them swallow my tube. After we caught a couple smallies we motored around the channels catching largemouths off beds. I caught one really nice female with a jig that weighed 4.5 pounds. Overall our best 5 bass weighed 12 pounds 3 ounces. Not a bad way to spend 2 hours.
May 21, 2007: My wife and I enjoyed the beautiful 80-degree weather while we fished the Benton Harbor stretch of the Joe tonight. We started the afternoon fishing backwater areas that had a bunch of spawners in them earlier in the year. They were loaded with males guarding fry so we left them alone. I decided to check a couple pre-spawn areas because it's about time for the second batch of lake smallies to come into the river and spawn. My hunch was right on and we caught around 20 colorful lake smallies with tubes. Kelly was kicking my rear end at first and caught our first 4 keepers. Thank goodness she sat down to read a book and gave me a chance to catch a couple bass:) Our best five weighed in at 18 pounds, 5 ounces and our biggest was 4.1 pounds.
May 17, 2007: A huge cold front that consisted of a temperature drop of 30 degrees challenged Brian Lieberg and I on the Benton Harbor Stretch of the Joe tonight. I wasn't sure how the fish were going to react to such a
change in temperature but based on tonight's
results I would say, "they eat." Lieberg and I started fishing in a backwater area that I thought would be less affected by the temperature change. Lieberg caught a nice 2.5 lb smallie on his first cast. A few minutes later he caught another keeper smallie, and then a third. He was killing me! I finally decided to join the party and put another 2.5lb smallie in the boat.
The fish were running a little small where we were fishing so we motored up to another venue without current. We caught 6 or so smallies and a couple largemouth there before moving to the hot spots. The only way I can express the amount of smallies we caught over the next 2 hours is by telling you that my arm is in a sling right now. We caught at least 10 chunky 2.5-4.3 pound smallies that fought like bulls. Lieberg lost a couple huge 4-5 pounders that broke him off.
The last spot we fished was a pre-spawn/post-spawn area with plenty of current. We caught one smallie after another. I can't say for sure but we landed at least 15 bass from this area that were between 2.5-4 pounds. We ended up catching around 35 bass in 3 hours and losing a bunch more. Our best 5 bass weighed in at 16 pounds 12 ounces and our big bass was 4.3 pounds. The fishing was so good that our best 15 bass weighed 42 pounds 2 ounces. Nearly a 3-pound average!!
May 14, 2007: Ron Nelson and I targeted spawning bass on Paw Paw Lake this afternoon for a couple of hours. The water temperature was 71 degrees in the channels and 66 degrees in the main lake. Males were on their nests all over the channels today but I only noticed one female. The males were very easy to catch, most of them bit on the second or third cast. We looked for main lake spawners for a little while but nothing was up yet. We ended up catching roughly 15 bass between 2-3.5 pounds.
May 12, 2007: Paw Paw Lake was the destination of choice today. We fished the channels for the first hour looking for spawners. The water temperature was in the low 60's and males were locked on their nests. They were very easy to catch; most of them would hit my bait on the fall. I didn't notice any females around but I knew they had to be close. I ended up catching 10 largemouth in the channels but none of them were huge. I motored to a couple other channels off the main lake and bass were spawning in those as well. They were paired up one after another. They were very aggressive and easy to catch. By the end of the afternoon I caught 15 largemouth and my best five weighed 13 pounds.
May 10, 2007: 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.
May 7, 2007: My wife pleasantly surprised me when she asked to go fishing after work today. It felt like Christmas morning! Today was a very nice day with a mild 75-degree air temperature and light south winds. We decided to fish the Benton Harbor stretch of the St. Joe River again. (I don't understand why anyone would go anywhere else.) The main river was high, muddy, and swift. We started fishing small creature baits, worms, and tubes in back water areas looking for spawners. The water temperature in most of the backwater was 65 degrees. Kelly was on fire today catching 10 keepers between 2.5-4 pounds. I only caught 8 smallies that ranged from 1-4 pounds. I caught our biggest bass with an Optimum Banzai Hog.
May 3, 2007: There is no better time or place to slay huge smallmouth than right now in the St. Joe River. My wife and I fished the river for two hours this evening from 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm. It was 71 degrees outside and the water temperature was 65 degrees. We started the afternoon targeting pre-spawn areas and we caught a couple keepers on gold lipless crankbaits. There weren't as many fish as there should have been in
my pre-spawn spots so we checked to see if they were spawning.
The fish were spawning everywhere and we were having a blast. We
had at least 25 smallies on but only managed to land 10. They
were flying out of the water, then digging below the boat, then jumping
some more. It was a challenge landing these suckers! The
ones we did land were toads! They ranged from 4-5 pounds and our
best five weighed in at 22 pounds even. I caught most of my fish
in a "secret area" so I'm only going to post one picture. The
picture is from a spot that we all know but it's not were we found the
mother load. Although, it's still a very good spot.