Southwest Michigan Fishing Report (May 2006)

5/31/06:  My wife Kelly and I fished a CATT Division 11event today at Paw Paw Lake.  A cold front just pushed through and the temp dropped about 20 degrees but the water temp was holding at 76.  The fish were spawning everywhere, I mean everywhere!!!!  Infact, there was a 4.22 smallie spawning on the boat ramp.  This fish wouldn't move for anything.  Nine boats launched right on top of it and Dan Danifeld still was able to come back and catch it.  Kelly and I decided to fish for main lake spawners along side of Gooding and Spear.  He and I found the same fish on Tuesday.  I caught our first keeper that weighed 2 lbs, on my very first cast.  My second fish was a 1.9 lb male that I caught off its bed.  Five Minutes later I had our third fish which happened to be our big bass, a 4.75 lb largemouth.  After I caught her I hooked her mate that ended up weighing 3.6 pounds.  Kelly and I finished out our limit in the channels where we caught 5 more fry guarding males.  We weighed in 5 bass that weighed 13.25 lbs.  This was only good enough for second place.  Gipson and Gipson took home first place catching an estonishing 17.50 lbs and their big bass was 4.85 lbs.  Congrats.     

5/27/06:  Today Rich and I directed the first Southwest Michigan Challenge Tournament on Pipestone Lake.  It was a very foggy morning that turned into a hot and sweltering day.  There were 12 boats that showed up to fish the tournament.  This was the perfect number of boats for Pipestone Lake any more would have been to many.  The morning top water bite was on fire.  Rich and I had a limit of bass by 8:00 am.  Throughout the day bass were moving up to their beds to spawn.  Although the fish were fussy we managed to aggravate a couple into biting by swimming small plastic worms right by their nose.  We culled out 3 of our top water fish to help out our total weight.  Rich and I ended up catching 15 lbs 7 oz to narrowly take home the victory.  It was a tough tournament to win.  Rob Frabiszak and Rob Freshour also caught a limit of bass weighing 15 lbs 7 oz.  The tie was broken by which teams big bass was biggest.  Thank goodness Rich caught a 3 lb 11 oz largemouth to break the tie.  Brian Spear and C.R. Gooding also caught 5 bass weighing in at 11 lbs 14 oz to take home 3rd place.  26 total bass were caught and all were released alive.  The next tournament is on Paw Paw Lake and were launching from the Watervliet Ramp.

5/22/06:  Rich Charleston and I went fishing at Pipestone Lake and the St. Joe River today.  We started out at Pipestone looking forward to a promissing morning.  We started the morning throwing top water baits.  I lost a nice fish on a toad.  Most of the fish are shallow and getting ready to spawn.  Rich caught a giant bass that was setting by a log.  Shortly after he caught his fish the trolling motor died :(.  Since the trolling motor was dead we decided to swap his boat for mine and head out to the river.  The fish we very aggressive and we caught 25 largemouth/smallmouth.  Our best 5 bass weighed in at 18 pounds 3 ounces and our biggest bass was 4 pounds 9 ounces.  There were a lot of bass guarding fry and some giant females still spawning.

5/20/06:  I had the pleasure of fishing Skegemog Lake which is one of Michigan's premier smallmouth lakes.  I was expecting the bass to be spawning so my wife and I started the morning looking for beds. We didn't see any.  The water temp was only 54 degrees so we adjusted and started fishing for pre-spawn bass.  I decided to fish Skegemog Lakes main point, which is called Skegemog piont.  My first cast with a tube resulted in a nice 3 lb 6 oz bass pictured to the right.  You can see the point we were fishing in the picture.  Immediately after I caught my first bass my wife caught her first bass which was a 2 lb smallie.  When she was reeling hers to the boat we noticed a huge cloud of smallmouth following her bass.  We ended up catching twenty 2-3 lb smallmouth in 1 hour off this point alone.  I've never experienced fishing like that before in my life.  After the action cooled down I decided to move away from the point and fish deeper water for bigger pre-spawn females.  We were dragging tubes in 20 ft of water over the top of huge logs.  We caught ten more quality smallies including my biggest smallmouth bass ever.  I caught a GINORMOUS (made up word) 5 pound 10 ounce smallmouth bass.  WOW!!! I still can't believe the size of her.  I would highly recommend taking a fishing trip to Skegemog Lake. 

5/17/06:  I braved the weather and went to Paw Paw Lake today to see what the bass were up to.  The water temp was 59 degrees in the channels and 56 degrees in the lake.  I noticed a lot of beds but only hafe of them had a bass locked on.  Only males were on the beds.  The females were suspended away from the bed in 10-12 ft of water.  The males were very aggressive and easy to catch.  I only had time to fish for 5 spawners because a thunderstorm was approaching rapidly.  I ended up catching 4 of the 5 spawners I fished for.  They weighed a total of 8.2 lbs.

5/13/06:  Today I had the pleasure of fishing Lake St. Clair with Matt Morgan.  It was windy, wavy, and rainy.  There were 2-4 ft waves that made Lake St. Clair look like coffee.  The water temperature was 49 degrees in most of the lake and 52-55 degrees in the channels.  The lake was to rough to spend much time fishing for smallmouth but we did end up catching one 3 lber.  We spent the majority of our time in the channels fishing for spawning largemouth.  The bite was very slow and we could only manage getting 7 largemouth to bite.  Our biggest bass was a 3 lb largemouth. 

5/9/06:  I took my friend Andy Shingledecker smallmouth fishing today on the St. Joe River.  We fished for about 4 hours and we caught 15 smallmouth and 5 largemouth.  Our best 5 bass weighed 15 lbs 6 oz, anchored by Andy's 4.6 lb giant.  The water temp is 65 and the bass are spawning. 

5/5/06:  Rich, my wife and I went out to Paw Paw Lake this morning to catch some largemouth.  The water temp was 62 and the bass were spawning everywhere in the channels.  We caught a ton of monster largemouth including a 4.9 lb giant that I caught on a top water toad.  We had three giants break off, who knows what they would have weighed.  Most of the females are still deep waiting to come up and spawn.

5/3/06: The catch and release bass season has started and it is HOT!!! Check out these 4 lb smallies I caught in the St. Joe River today.  My best 5 bass weighed 19 lbs 15 oz.  I caught a total of 15 bass that had a total weight of 51 lbs 1 oz.  My biggest smallie weighed 4 lb 10 oz.  I weighed all of my bass on an XTool.