Lake St. Clair Blade Bait Beatdown!

[djkimmel]

Some firsts today! 1st trip of the year for me to fabled Lake St. Clair. 1st time fishing with Mike Lohn (21XDC on the forum) and 1st time I ever went 80 miles per hour in a bass boat! What I day... I could write a book about everything that happened on this day but not everyone has time to read a book so I will try to hit the highlights.

1st of all I met 21XDC through the forum originally and I'm very glad to have him as a member! He has a beautiful 21 foot XDC Bullet Bass boat that is blazing fast with the 'slow' prop as he put it to me (apparently he may have heard I get bored easy and bring lots of tackle!! ).

We met a little early but not too much - around 7am - to beat some of the crowds, on Sunday April 17th. Knowing the gorgeous weather forecast for the day and the trend leading to it we expected to feature more than a couple bass boats on the big Lake St. Clair today and there were already a number trailers in the ramp when we got there.

21XDC loves blade baits and I love them when they're working for me so I was really looking forward to this day. Mike is an excellent host. He let me raid his big box of custom-made blade baits so I could use sizes smaller than my 1/2 regular blades I own. I think it made a big difference because...

I had the greatest day of blade bait fishing I've ever had!!! Wow! Is all I can say about that! I got off to a slow start. Told Mike I had to get my rhythm down first and I did. He caught the first smallie here of the morning moments after we started on the Mile Roads. He caught the 2nd, 3rd, 4th... I'm not sure how many before I finally got one in the boat (I think my 1st one was a dink but with a day of so much I can no longer recall).



What was odd about the day is we were losing and missing a bunch - way more than normal for blade baits. Just to be different I put on a Steel Shad I've been wanting to try first and I missed / lost 2 or 3 on that before I broke down and borrowed one of Mike's! He puts double hooks on his and they don't snag or tangle anywhere near as much as some blade snag and tangle... though my powers of the snag were enough to still snag and lose 4 or 5 blade baits throughout the day - maybe 8 or 10 snags total! Skills man, skills!!

Once I found the rhythm though I had no doubt we were doing the right thing for the day. We saw some bass caught but we seemed to be getting lots of bites and the sheer number of bites made us still able to land a big number of bass like this fatty I was fortunate to catch!

I'm more of picture goof I guess than 21XDC Mike and he is a gracious host as I already mentioned to we took a number of pictures of nice bass I was lucky to land during the day while he just released most of his back into the water.











We kept moving south along the Mile Roads and every little while we would find a pod of bass and then Hammer Time! We'd hammer them for a few minutes. Then we'd work back and forth catching a few more of the less eager ones. I think we had at least 5 doubles during the day because when we got 1 excited another 1 or 2 or 3 would bite right away too. Even though we were using 1/4 oz (mostly Mike) or 3/8 oz blade (me when it was deeper and more affected by the lake current) they got down fast so we could take quick advantage of a hot bite.

All I can say is there was a ton of laughing and big smiles in the boat throughout the day as we fought bass after bass after bass even though we were missing and losing some. There's so many stories to tell but I promised early on to hit the highlights so here's one: after running me 80 mph down the lake just to say I've done it we stopped on a spot and 21XDC hooked into a big 'un!

It wasn't before we figured we weren't dealing with a bass. Sure enough this MONSTER muskie swims by with his blade bait in the corner of its mouth!!! I stopped fishing after a couple minutes because all we had was a rubber net in the boat and you can't put a muskie in one of those (try it if you never have to see the bad outcome ). After a few minutes of expert fighting a big fish on light tackle I was laying on the deck of the boat with my arm in the 50 degree water (high 40s to low 50s most of the day most of the places we went).





Finally Mike was able to lead the giant fish right past my hand and I got hold of it and hoisted it heavily into the boat keeping a death grip on it. (The first time I tried to grab it earlier in the fight I got a face full of cold water!! ) I don't know if we high-fived, laughed, heehawed or what for sure. I just remember lots of excitement and congratulations to Mike for getting the huge fish into the boat.

We had quite a group of anglers watching to so we heard some words from them too! No measuring tape but Mike had a 50 pound scale so he tried to weigh it but the muskie stretched to big split ring out between the mouth clip and the scale. Too heavy for the scale to weigh!! After a couple quick pictures we released it back into the water and it swam away strong right for the bottom. We had drifted quite a ways by then so we decided to run back up the lake a ways and try some more spots.

And we found some more fish!! Other highlights, besides just really enjoying the day in the boat with Mike, I had a muskie on that I actually snagged in the side for a minute or so that looked to be over 20 pounds, much smaller than Mike's monster that was anywhere from 35 to 45 pounds depending upon who you ask and who is looking at the pictures. It was a very broad fish across the back and quite difficult to hold it up.

I lost my big muskie as I said because the hook pulled out and that's okay. I didn't want to fight it for a long time while it was snagged in the side. Who knows how long that would have took and how hard on the fish.

Later I hooked into something big again that just turned out towards the main lake and stripping out 10 or 20 feet at a time just kept going without showing any signs of stopping before it pulled off. I'm thinking I need a different rod for blade baiting...

It was probably another muskie. We saw some other bass anglers fighting one for a while later. To clarify, we ended up not trying anything other than blade baits. It's what I came there for and mission accomplished. I caught 4 or 5 times as many blade bait bass as I've ever caught before in one day. Mike was really good with the blade bait as expected since he loves throwing them. I don't know how many total fish we had on or how many we landed but both my arms and my hands were sore from fighting fish all day! A good feeling to drive home with after a long day on the water that will be extremely hard to top this year! Thanks Mike!

[21XDC]

Wow... What a great writer you are. You let me relive the day like it happened again.

I wanted to thank you again for landing this Musky. W/o you, I probably would not have these pictures to enjoy. Dan, It was my pleasure fishing with you. I feel like we fished as a team about as good as I fish with any of my tournament partners. I found that we both have a lot in common, More than I have with most. I wish you lived closer to fish together more often.

Lets get out again at least once more this year...

[djkimmel]

Sounds good to me. I had a blast! Muskie and all!

We'll get more pictures of your fish and I will do a better job at the pictures (as long as you remind me maybe )... though I sometimes like scenery in pictures too!

[djkimmel]

PS: You are a great 'guide' Thanks again. Again.

[Mini]

Great job both of you!

[djkimmel]

Thanks Mini! It was fun!