Mystery Man whacks them while I watch (and catch a few too) LSC 8-10-17

[djkimmel]

Right back to Lake St. Clair the following day - Thursday, August 10, 2017. This time I'm going out with a 'local' who fishes there a lot. Due to various reasons that are not important, I will refer to him solely as 'Mystery Man.' Don't ask why. Just enjoy the story...

Because I'm coming over from Lansing to the big lake about an hour later than earlier trips I forget that 60 minutes can mean a whole different experience!! I should have left an extra 30 minutes or so early to allow for the building weekday morning work commuters! I didn't so I end up meeting Mystery Man at the lake 30 minutes late. Luckily, he goes easy on me... whew!


We end up starting to fish pretty quick because we start shallow to limber up a little - just the way I like it! I break out my new Yellow Magic popper and it doesn't take long for small bass to begin whacking it!! Mystery Man actually expected largemouth bass here shallow along the Mile Roads but most of our strikes come from little smallies like this one I caught.

It's pretty much always fun to get topwater bass strikes, especially smallmouth bass! Mystery Man is using a small walker topwater and he actually does have a small muskie attack it but it launches at the expensive lure giving it a glancing blow while cartwheeling over top of it!! Exciting and no one is actually harmed...


Trying to up the anty a little (maybe even a lot?) I put on a large, loud walker lure myself. I think it was 2 casts and a mean, but not that big smallmouth smashes it!! I forget that Lake St. Clair smallmouth bass have no fear!!


Mystery Man actually does manage to catch long, skinny keeper smallmouth bass on his smaller walking lure. After a handful of fun topwater bites that produce nothing big but do get me warmed up and ready for more, we move out a little deeper to another area a few miles away.

I was still using the bigger walker lure and I had a nice one jump all over it. Tons of floating grass catching on the lure so bad I start to think I just need to switch to something else now - it's like everyone cut their long lawns and dumped it into Lake St. Clair!! I had the one solid keeper smallmouth on but the wily bass took me right into a big wad of floating grass after a couple jumps and somehow shook loose on impact with the big wad of grass - I guess that's the Lake St. Clair version of getting buried in the pads by a largemouth?!?


Meanwhile, Mystery Man doesn't wait for a better clue and he switches to a drop shot worm of some kind. He starts catching them and catches a pretty nice smallmouth not real deep yet. If you know the key spots you can still catch some nice bass early without heading out to the abyss I guess! This was not going to be his last big smallmouth bass today!


Meanwhile, I'm a little more stubborn or I just enjoy trying many things (might be a nicer way to put it?). I pick up a spybait and start tossing it. Throw a spybait on Lake St. Clair you better like catfish... because catfish like spybaits!! Only end up with 2 good bites all day on the spybait. Lost a fish right away... don't know what but hit good and felt strong, and this squiggly, hard-fighting whiskered dude. Had a decent smallie follow me in later too out deep but my bait was tangled and the whole lure was spinnin lazily!


I switch again. Tubes short-hopped or paused on the bottom started working for me - Erie Goby and Formula G3 though Mystery Man was catching more on a drop shot worm. I had a few bites on the Stevie Rig but wasn't getting them good.

The bite was pretty good still kind of shallow but it started to fade after about 30 minutes of popping fish. So we pulled everything up and headed out deeper...


Hitting some of Mystery Man's scattered waypoints he starts putting on a drop shot bass clinic with one of his 'secret' lures. So secret he didn't even want to remind me later what it was... You know us anglers... He commenced to putting a hurtin' on some Toads!! He'd get one or two at every one of our stops while I went almost biteless!! You probably know that is not a great feeling...

I did have one big one follow a deep crankbait to the boat for me and tried to hit it right when the Strike King 6XD turned to go up to the boat. We didn't connect but the big bass circled under my lure several times looking for something to eat!! Then it vanished back into the depths!


Like 'whack-a-mole' Mystery Man played whack-a-toad today on his drop shot! He ended up with 5 like this so I know he had over 20 today. 5 biggest came from 4 widely separated areas. I was relegated to bass under 2.5 pounds until later in the day.


Late in our fishing day - mid-afternoon - I switched to Marcel's worm (Case Plastics Lil Magic Stick) and finally started to get my rhythm on these deeper, scattered Michigan smallies! Popped my best 3 bass in a row fairly quick! Looked like the same bass 3 times! But alas it was time to go. So, next time... I will begin again to improve my ability to catch those bigger, deeper, scattered Michigan Lake St. Clair smallmouth bass (I hope!).