St. Clair

[stackenem]

Got to fish for the first time on St.Clair this Sat. Props to Kevin aka Fishon 1219, He was a very gracious boater. Took us to where we caught fish waited till I had my limit before taking off to other areas to look for bigger fish. Had an excellent time. If you ever get a chance to fish with him you will enjoy it, I did. Thanks Kevin.
Bill

[yukonjack2]

well, sounds awesoem - how did it go out there? results?  cet us know!

Jack

[MaizeNBlue]

I know the winner had just over 19 lbs, i think 2-4 place was 16-18 lbs. I'm sure PB will post the offical results on monday. As for me, was a tough one, me and my non-boater, both got our limit of large mouths, nothing big, real quick, then looked for smallies, failed badly, then went back to large mouths hoping to cull, between us we prolly caught 40 or so, just couldn't get any with size. i finished with 9.4,  non-boater 10.1 and PB, i think had 9.7, i'm pretty sure I finished near the bottom.

[DOWD]

From  my vantage point he was back boating you pretty bad in Muscamoot.

You guys should have loaded the boat with toads,  if you guys would have moved from away from the reed bed.

[canvsbk]

You guys on that side of the state get to have all the fun.

[djkimmel]

Here's a brief report on the tournament from my viewpoint - it was my first ABA and my first day on St. Clair this year - I would have liked one day of practice, but that how things go sometimes. Lots of solid catches.

19-4 won it - I think the boater's name was 'Hans' but not 100% sure.

Eric took 2nd - he was with the winner but he's not talking. I forget what he had. Sorry Eric.

My draw partner took 3rd with 18-2 - Mark Hill / Black Cat. I'd catch a 2-12, he'd catch a 3-8. I'd catch a 3-1, he'd catch a 3-10.

I forget 4th and last place in the money. The weight was 16-13 I think (because I had 16-11, tied with another guy the next place out of the money) and he was the draw partner of another boater so three of the four money places went to the back deck.

Fishon1219 got big bass at 5-12 I believe, but he weighed it and said it was about 7 pounds and the biggest smallie he's ever caught. I know I 'weighed' some long bass that didn't weigh as much as bass I didn't count, but that is just part of fishing a spring paper tournament that goes by length-based weight.

Mark and I caught a lot of 3-pound plus bass. It was great to see so many well-fed and healthy looking fish. And we were not sight-fishing beds either. We were out deeper fishing prespawn bass (some may have been on deep beds, but we couldn't see bottom and the water temps were only 49 to 52 in the morning).

I took a quick side trip into Goose Bay early and didn't see anything obvious. Didn't find any prespawn schools after checking a couple quick spots. I heard Muskamoot was crowded and getting fished hard, so we went down by 12 Mile - 11 Mile instead.

A couple terns were diving on minnows to put us in the right zone. As soon as we got in that area, I caught a 2-12 on a crankbait. Mark then started putting 3-pounders in the boat on a tube, but not dragging (I hate dragging tubes). He was casting off the side and towards the front. Once I started doing that (and borrowed his hot tube color), I started catching bigger bass too. I never quite caught up. It was a nice day on the water.

[Eric]

We just fished a big ole shallow area that had scattered patches of weeds right there in anchor bay.  The water was muddier than I've ever seen before on LSC.  If Hans hadn't had caught them there earlier, I wouldn't have had the confidence to try to catch them in the mud like that.  But we did.  We caught them on reaction type baits, but we talked to a couple of tubin' boats who were catching the heck out of them on tubes as well.  So, I guess I know even less thatn I thought about them silly smallmouth over there.

[fishon1219]

From? my vantage point he was back boating you pretty bad in Muscamoot.

You guys should have loaded the boat with toads,? if you guys would have moved from away from the reed bed.

Mark,
As a sportsman I truly resent your opinion that I was back seating my partner. As he said in his post I made sure to stay in the area we started in so he could get his limit even though I had mine 1 hour before he had his. The whole time we were fishing were you saw us I asked him if he had spots he could hit an the answer was "YES". In fact I even held the boat in position so he could catch some of the bedding fish and he managed to catch just as many fish there as I did. You werent in my boat so you don't know what was going on. I hope you were just kidding about the backseat thing in your post. It is hard to read a posters thought's when reading what they wriet so I am going to assume you were just trying to be funny. If so Ha Ha!!!

[Revtro]

Had a great day.  As usual, Anthony ran a great tourney.  Like Dan, I would have liked to have had a day of practice, but couldn't, so I was fishing blind.  We went up to Muskamoot, but quickly realized that without spending quite a bit of time up there we weren't going to be able to locate the fish, so we bugged out and fished the Mile Roads.  I just haven't spent any time up in Muskamoot, so I didn't even know where to look.  Now that we can fish during the spawn, I hope to learn that area.

Anyway... we ended up doing well down on the Mile Roads, but I totally blew it.  I got two nice fish and a decent keeper, but lost a giant at the boat when he came unbuttoned from my jerkbait and then later I failed to hook another follower.  My partner got a nice limit, but didn't make the money either.  Mark, you rocked dude.  Nice job. 

My first inclination was to go fishing for some largemouth first, but I'm glad I never did that because the smallies were ON.  We caught a bunch and they were aggressively slamming the jerkbait near the end of the day.  Wish I could have had a half hour more.  Doesn't that sound familiar?  I had a great partner.  He was a great guy and I was glad to spend a day with him.  Hope we meet up sometime again. 

Kevin, I talked to Bill after the tourney and he couldn't have been happier.  Sounds like you guys had a great time. 

[DOWD]

Kevin,
Dont get your panites in an uproar. I was giving it back to you like you gave it to me last Sept. after the Evertstart event.

[Revtro]

Isn't it "knickers in a twist"?   

[djkimmel]

Try to use a smilie face or something in the future because the rest of us aren't in on the 'joke' and it looked like things were going to get ugly. We don't need ugly... I have my finger poised above the delete button and don't want to press it unless I have to. (And no knickers or 'panites' [spelling intentional since it's probably not a PG-13 word] here - just briefs - so I guess it would be briefs in a bunch. )

Sounds like Bill was pretty happy. He seemed that way at the weigh in. Quite a few were happy that day - another great day fishing in Michigan.

[Bass_Cat]

I left my boat home since I knew Anthony already had too many signed up for this tournament and I just wanted to say I couldn't have ended up with a better partner than Dan. I had the pleasure of fishing with him the week before during a local club event on Cass Lake.

My CATT partner (Tim Schmitz) and I had been fishing bedded fish in the bay so I really didn't plan on fishing this tournament, he talked me into it. When Dan said he wanted to start in Goose Bay I really didn't have much to say. I didn't want to infringe on fish Tim and I had found together. We didn't stay in there long and decided to go down the lake. We were on our way down when Dan spotted some gulls diving on bait so we stopped. I think they call the area the Mile something or other... I also seen some smallies chasing bait to the surface while we were fishing. The rest is history.

Like I said Dan, if you're ever on my side of town and need a partner, let me know. If you just want to go out and have some fun, let me know.

Thanks again for another great day on the lake.

Mark

[djkimmel]

You're welcome Mark... I thoroughly enjoyed the day of working together to both come up with a good catch. It was another learning experience (as they all should be).

I'm glad you didn't get after me for calling you Black Cat instead of Bass_Cat. All these screen names on all these forums are starting to blur together...

I still plan on finishing the write up follow up to the Cass Lake day. I just got sidetracked for a bit. I had it part way done before.

I'll keep your offer in mind for my trips over to your side of town later in June. Thanks!