Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

Jay Shaffer invited me to fish with him while he is practicing for the Michigan B.A.S.S. Nation State Championship on Lake St. Clair. Since it's Lake St. Clair of course I said yes and met him yesterday morning (August 11, 2016) at about 7am to head out.

Jay had decided to fish Michigan waters only because he had to be in by 2pm to get ready for the State Championship meeting. With the weather forecast being iffy it seemed like a good idea not to run too far too - which ended up being a good call!

We fished mostly deep flats looking for any kind of structure, and of course looking for bass too! I wanted to get some more time fishing the Spinbait 90 doing some spybaiting also.

We weren't fishing too long when my Spinbait 90 (Ghost Gill color) got slammed good and I tightened up to feel a strong fish surging.

(http://glb.glwimg.com/images/big-sheepshead-spybaiting20160811_075339.jpg)
Unfortunately, Jay wanted to see a bass caught but this was not a bass. It stripped out line but it never tried to jump and when it got under the boat I felt the telltale flippy-floppy feeling of a big Sheepshead, and sure enough, that's what it was! A 6 or 7 pounder. Oh well, it definitely got my juices flowing and I figured if I could get a Sheepy to hit it I should be able to get a bass to hit it.

I was trying different rigs and actually caught this sheepshead on 15 lbs test P-Line Spectrex IV braid which made it easy to hook the fish out a long ways.

I also threw the Spinbait 90 on 8 lbs test P-Line HALO Fluorocarbon line on a lighter crankbait rig but unfortunately I never got any other strikes on the spybait technique on this day of looking for new bass fishing spots.

(http://glb.glwimg.com/images/big-lake-st-clair-smallmouth-bass20160811_085149_Burst01.jpg)
On the next spot a little later I was making long casts with an Xtreme Bass Tackle Formula G3 4 inch tube and 3/8 oz Kustom Kicker tube jig head trying to make a loud splash and then snap-jigging the tube along the bottom. I cast out and just started snapping the tube along the bottom when my big smallie of the day over 4 pounds smacked the tube!

It must have took the tube deep because though it was hooked in the corner of the mouth it was bleeding from the gills a little. I posed for a quick picture and then released the bass back to the depths hoping the bleeding stops and it makes it okay.

Jay was dragging a drop shot when he hooked a big fish too but after a couple minutes fight the strong fish pulled off while he was distracted. Jay also caught another small keeper bass.

We moved around a lot looking for schools of bass without much to show for it. When we moved in a little shallower we finally popped a couple solid keepers on deep diving crankbaits over a couple hundred yards stretch but were unable to get more bites even on a second drift.

Then the storms moved in and we ran North trying to decide what to do. What the back end of the storm slid over the lake and we heard the first rumbles of thunder around 1pm it was time to go in early. We caught a couple small largemouth bass fishing the Clinton River on the way in to Harley but that was the end of the abbreviated day.

I don't know how much the anglers get to fish today, the first day of the 2-day state championship but Jay wasn't sure how he is going to do. It will probably matter if he gets to run to his better spots in Canadian water since that is where much of the action seems to be right now for numbers.