My 1st 2017 bass fishing trip to Lake St. Clair 5-15

[djkimmel]

I was disappointed to say the least when our legislative bass fishing outing for Monday, May 15 had to be canceled. Thankfully, Greg Glasser contacted me and said since we had planned to be out there anyway we might as well go fishing! I said yes, sure!!

We got there moderately early in the morning and it was a pretty nice day. Mostly sunny and light breeze to a slight chop! Would have been a great day, though still a little chilly for the bass outing weather-wise.

We started on the northern parts of the Mile Roads but the water was murky there and we could not see anything. There were some boats in the area but no one seemed to be catching much. After trying a few things we decided to head south.

We worked our way several miles south over the next few hours finding generally murky to slightly clear water. We weren't finding any bass. We saw just a handful caught mostly by drifting draggers (not my favorite thing to do). We even saw a couple bass caught that way in muddier water but figured the lack of many boats said no one was catching a lot.


Finally, out in front of the old blue sea wall I had a really nice Lake St. Clair smallie slam my small Redeye Shad. Notably the bass did not hit until I did a complete short pause in the retrieve. The bass slammed the lure a second after I started the pause!!

After a few hours of not much happening... though we did see a few BIG muskie just cruising along maybe 6-8 inches under the surface along the Mile Roads looking like big floating logs - Greg said we should go back to the northern area we had started on.


What a difference! We could see!! Most of the anglers, and there were a few more now than there had been in the morning, still appeared to be drifting and dragging, but we could actually see many beds now. Greg quickly caught a decent smallie off of a bed. We couldn't see the bass very often unless we got right over top of them or they came out after out lures.


I had a couple come off of beds and smack a big suspending jerkbait but they weren't getting it very quick and we started targeting individual beds anyways to I was pitching various lures - tubes, darters and drop shots to catch solid bass like this one!! They were all mostly over 2.5 to 3+ pounders - fun!!


We didn't catch any real big ones so I only took a few pictures of nice ones this bass Greg caught off another bed. As we worked our way out and around we found more and more beds! There were quite a few in this area!!

We caught a decent though not huge number of solid Lake St. Clair smallmouth bass this way until it was time for me to go mid-afternoon.


As a bonus, Greg even caught a chunker largemouth bass near the bedding smallies when he got around just a little thicker weeds!

It was a fun day and I really thank Greg for getting me out fishing on the big lake!!! I don't think he and I have fished together in a boat in over 25 years since we drew each other in an old federation tournament on Lake Charlevoix.

Greg took out his daughter and grandson for a couple hours later, and says they caught another 15-18 nice bass including one big 5 pounder not too far from where we had caught them.

It does appear to me that the smallmouth bass this year on Lake St. Clair have come on to beds in more clear stages from the north end of the Mile Roads working their way south more then ever with each little stretch getting HOT before the next farther south stretch would then get HOT!! It has been interesting everywhere actually so far this year.