Hey!! I know this guy..

[motocross269]

This guy looks familiar.... ........

http://www.freep.com/article/20130623/SPORTS10/306230080/bass-lake-st-clair

Thanks for getting the concerns of Michigan Bass Anglers out there Dan.....I am fairly central on the issue and have concerns going either way(I prefer to let Science and people more in the know than me work though it) but it is good to see Bass fishing getting some much needed press....

[djkimmel]

Yes. I didn't expect it to get this far already but it did. See the Michigan Bass Season forum for more information about where we are at so far.

[Firefighter Jeff]

  Hey  !!!  I think I know who took that picture !!! 

[Genie]

I think I know where he caught those ...

[djkimmel]

I thought about mentioning I caught them off beds too but I am already 'radical' enough...

I thought the article would have small pictures of several of the people interviewed but maybe my radical-ness made it necessary to make sure everyone knew who started all this 'trouble.'

Guess we'll have to wait a little bit until they find out once again that this is about 400,000 Michigan bass anglers, trying to stop the steady loss of anglers and fishing license sales, and boosting our natural resource economy through fishing tourism promotion (not 'bass exploitation'...), not about keeping everyone off 'their' lake. This is also about 11,000 inland lakes, over 30,000 miles of river and ALL the Great Lakes, not Lake St. Clair.

By the way, for anyone who reads this and might be thinking so, Lake St. Clair bass are NOT overfished despite what a few people seem to believe when looking at a 'bunch' of boats along the Mile Roads. That is from actual science and numbers, very recent, from the MDNR. I did mention this in my interview and even said the writer could call Mike Thomas of the MDNR to confirm this.

I also fished the Mile Roads this year and I didn't find a single bass with ripped lips or even an obvious sign it had recently been caught by someone else. What a terrible way to scare up more bias and infighting - particularly from someone who complains about Pure Michigan not promoting actual fishing in their commercials? Does not compute very well...

Maybe the intent is for Pure Michigan to promote more fishing in Michigan on every lake EXCEPT Lake St. Clair?? Anyone remember NIMBY?

We need to learn to share. No, we have to learn to share.

PS: Michigan charter captains are required to report all their catch and, without looking up my notes for the exact number, even they are releasing something like 80% of their smallmouth bass caught on Lake St. Clair, not keeping all of them like they used to (the big many-angler boats). I don't know for sure if the Canadian charters are doing that but I do know I haven't seen them out catching large numbers of bass with multiple boats like I did ~15+ years ago. Regardless, we've had 6 full seasons of more catch-and-release bass fishing during the spring now in Michigan statewide and does anyone want to try to tell me the bass fishing has gone down hill?

PPS: Mark Ridgway, the Ontario fisheries biologist who has been trying to prove for many, many years that fishing for spawning bass can be shown to have a direct population-level effect on bass, particularly smallmouth bass, now says Lake Erie smallmouth bass populations are not collapsing due to whatever reason - pick your reason to try to be scared: spawn fishing, tournaments during the spawn, gobies - the population has changed (as smallmouth populations do) but is still doing well and appears that it will continue to do well, partly due to the abundant goby forage. Good thing those Ohio anglers gave up all that spring tournament fishing with no study data showing they needed to and no study data showing it had any effect (other than reducing fishing opportunity and harming the local economies) on the smallmouth bass population. Of course, as one wise angler pointed out to me a while ago, if the tournaments during the smallmouth bass spawn where to blame for the changes in the Lake Erie smallmouth bass population, why was the same exact change happening in the Ontario waters of Lake Erie where bass fishing in the spring was closed? Good question. Wish more anglers would ask those types of questions rather than demanding fishing regulation changes that no one has any idea whether or not it will make a difference.

[motocross269]

This is the comment that I left...

Bass tournament angling pretty much created the "Catch and Release" doctrine that is followed today..This article seems to imply that Tournament anglers are in favor of puting the State's resource at risk with no scientific data that supports the limited effects of tournament angling on Bedding fish.....Nothing could be further from the truth and I have yet to read a test done by the DNR nationwide that supports the claim that practicing catch and release while bass are bedding is detrimental to the overall population......In this state tournaments have been going on for years on Burt and Mullet lake during the spawn and that fishery continues to be one of the best bass fisheries in the country....
I question if the author really has an  interest in Growing outdoor opportuniites in Michigan for ourselves and future Generations or is more prone to let gut reactions and the prodding of special interests cloud her vision....

Let sound science dictate resource managnement not the desire to have the entire lake to ourselves.........

[djkimmel]

Good job. You made some points I've been wondering about too.

No one is going to get Lake St. Clair to themselves. There's no way to say, 'okay you 10 there can fish it, but you newer 10... you're going to have to go to some other lake.' Who would be the person to decide who gets to try the lake and who doesn't?

I bet some of the people who tell me, 'there's too many people fishing the lake already' wouldn't be too happy if someone created a fishing draw for who gets to fish Lake St. Clair, and EVERYONE has to go into the draw and take their chances??

Good thing we don't need that kind of thing on Lake St. Clair. It's more than big enough with enough bass for a lot more fishing. PLUS, we have all that other water... Kind of a point to open everything up the same date is to make all water equal, and equally available and desirable. St. Clair will always be popular because of its location and its makeup but you draw more attention when you try to say, 'this lake is so special, it has to be opened up later than 99.8% of the rest of Michigan bass water' even though actual data - bass growth and population, fishing pressure, voluntary release rate (90%), size and even MDNR fisheries study says Lake St. Clair doesn't need anymore protection than any other Michigan lake.

Anyone with common sense can see we've had 30 years of illegal and/or incidental bass catching during the spring, plus 6 years now of legal catch-and-release bass fishing along with the ongoing incidental bass catching and yet the smallmouth bass fishing is far, far better now then when I first started fishing Lake St. Clair in the mid-80s when largemouth bass still dominated the lake and tournament catches. These past 6 seasons have been some of the best smallmouth bass fishing of the past 15 years of smallmouth bass fishing that is the best anyone who knows anything about Lake St. Clair is aware of!! That includes an angler who has fished the lake for over 70 years!

I actually included bass tournament catch records for Burt/Mullett Lakes in my information to the MDNR WRSC from the late 90s until present. We actually started having bass tournaments on those lakes in 1991. I've been fishing some of the same boulders almost that entire time, and most of them now since 1999, and I can promise you the bass are as or more numerous now than they were in 1991, and they are DEFINITELY BIGGER!! Way, way bigger. Off the same boulders over all those years - despite all those years of increasing bass fishing pressure, mostly during the entire bass spawn.

It's the same on many big AND smaller lakes in Northern Michigan where the bass are supposed to be so much more sensitive - I've fished most of them since the mid-80s to early 90s until now. If we only had a few hundred small lakes in Michigan, I might be slightly more willing to listen to people afraid of change about exclusions. But, we don't. We have thousands of small lakes. PLUS the big lakes. PLUS the rivers. PLUS the Great Lakes. PLUS, the state of Indiana DOES only have a few hundred, mostly smaller lakes AND you can catch and keep bass (if you want to) ALL YEAR, and have been able to for something like 50 YEARS!!!!! They still have bass left too!! In fact, they have done 2 studies about bass fishing during the spawn in 2008 and in 2013. They say there bass are as good or better now than they were 10 years ago! Are people trying to tell me that MICHIGAN BASS are whimps while Hoosier bass can take it?!? sheesh... you gotta be kidding me... we have lakes were bass swim from Indiana water to Michigan water and back. You think those bass are somehow different when they cross the order?? Not hardly.

The obvious thing to do is open them all up the same way at the same time for bass. Spread fishing out. Provide the greatest amount of variety and opportunity that most states - most of whom allow bass fishing all year - only dream about!

It amazes me that we are down to only 4 states with any type of statewide closed bass season, most of the other states, including Northern states, have had legal bass fishing statewide all year mostly for many decades, and they ALL still have bass fishing - the states with the most and best water quality have the best bass fishing too - and yet people in Michigan can still say things about needing to limit the bass fishing to 'protect' them... The only thing we are protecting them from is other people getting to catch MY bass!! Some people just don't want other people, or certain 'types' of anglers, catching their bass.

Being selfish like that, and particularly deciding that certain 'types' of anglers are desirable, while other 'types' are not, is bad for fishing, and everything related to fishing, in Michigan. Your last sentence said quite a bit about what is the biggest hurdle to getting more fishing opportunity in Michigan. We all voted a long time ago for scientific management. Just some of us thought we were voting for it to be done on someone else's lake apparently...