Lake St. Clair Fishing Report: Vacation Fishing...Weeds, Dinks & a Couple Hog Muskies!
Switched gears for a second this weekend…We were supposed to be taking Kaedin and a bass fishing expert out in Ludington yesterday, but Mother Nature threw another twist into the mix. High winds and waves, combined with a baby shower/pig roast in Highland, kept me in Howell for the weekend. Did I miss Ludington? Sure. Totally. Did I manage to turn it into a great weekend anyway? Yep! It's been since the beginning of April since I've spent an entire weekend away from Ludington, and I think I kinda needed this.
Surgeon Jenn made the Friday drive east with a pit stop in Lansing to see her daughters. Saturday consisted of the gym, experimenting with a new salmon soup recipe we concocted, which was a HUGE success and will definitely have legs for many, many years, changing the fluids in the Verado, then hitting the pig roast.
All of this, of course, was simply creating good vibes for Surgeon Jenn's Lake St. Clair debut Sunday morning.
Today's crew was pretty complicated…Me…Surgeon Jenn…That's it.
I normally launch at Metro, but this morning I decided to try the DNR launch at Crocker for the first time. It did not disappoint. I usually fish the stretch from Metro Beach down toward the 400 Club in about 8-10 FOW. The Crocker launch basically dropped us right where I wanted to be. Perfect!
Our plan was simple…Run a series of crankbaits, put somewhere between 40 and 80 fish in the boat by noon and keep a few for dinner. I've done this troll a number of times over the years. Usually in June, though. Never in September. How different could it possibly be? We were about to find out.
I talked with Lake St. Clair wannabe legend Corey Brush at the pig roast Saturday night, and he pretty much nailed the morning's biggest problem. Weeds. Surface weeds. Underwater weeds. Floating weeds. Probably weeds growing on other weeds.
We got two lines set and I was setting the third when a 30-plus-inch musky absolutely smoked a Flicker Shad. Hey Mr. Musky! I worked it to about 10 feet behind the boat and it threw the hook. No big deal. We're three lines into the morning and already had a musky hooked up! Then I looked over. The other two boards went back. Oh boy! THIS is how it’s supposed to work! Nope. Weeds. Both of them.
I had anticipated not being able to run six lines because we'd be catching too many fish. Instead, we couldn't run six lines because we were catching too many freaking weeds. Slight miscalculation. We eventually pulled everything and ran a few miles east.
The weeds may have been a little lighter there, but not enough to make the effort worthwhile. So we pulled again and ran north into the middle of Anchor Bay. Much better! Still a few weeds floating around, but at least we could finally run a spread.
The problem here was that Anchor Bay appeared to contain an extremely hungry population of dinks. Aggressive little perch. Rock bass. More perch. More rock bass. It was enough to guarantee there would be no skunk hanging over Surgeon Jenn's Lake St. Clair debut. Beyond that? Meh.
At about 10:15am, we pulled everything again and ran southeast toward deeper water and the shipping channel. Now THIS water was weed-free! Almost immediately we hit a keeper walleye and some dandy smallmouth. Hmmm...Maybe we should've started here?
Then another Flicker Shad took a nice rip on Surgeon Jenn's side. This wasn't a perch. Wasn't a rock bass. Wasn't a smallmouth. Surgeon Jenn successfully worked a 40-to-42-inch musky all the way to the back of the boat, where it was greeted by me holding a pair of Bogas. No net. Well, technically we had a net. We just didn't have a net remotely large enough for this hog.
So now I'm nursing the leader, looking at this musky, looking at the Bogas, looking at all those freaking teeth and trying to figure out how I'm going to Boga this thing without getting Flicker Shadded myself.
The musky solved the problem for me…Shake…Snap…Gone. And Mr. Musky swam away with a souvenir Flicker Shad.
Much like the billfish world, I explained to Surgeon Jenn that a leader touch counts. I'm counting it!
Final tally for the morning was somewhere around 10 perch, 5 rock bass, 5 smallmouth, a keeper walleye and a couple stud muskies.
Not exactly the 40-to-80-fish beatdown I had envisioned…but for a September Lake St. Clair experiment? I'll take it.
Hot Bites:
Every bite came on the 6 Flicker Shads pictured.
What I Learned Today:
Duh. If I'm going to accidentally hook hog muskies while trolling Lake St. Clair, I should probably have a boating solution for hog muskies. How many freaking nets do I need? Apparently one more.
Modern corn is freaking ridiculous. Some of the corn we drove past looked legitimately 12 feet tall. I actually had to stop the truck and get out for a picture. I'm 6'2". The corn won by a mile.
We kept two smallmouth and the walleye for dinner. Sorry, catch-and-release smallmouth dudes. They were delicious. Don't worry. We threw some back. Balance.
Apparently Logan likes to eat musky. He actually put in a request for me to bring him back a keeper. I know the bass guys can get a little emotional about people keeping bass. But the musky guys? That's approaching death-threat territory. Probably a good thing that line broke. Sorry, Logan.
A perch, a rock bass and a giant clump of weeds apparently all have the exact same bite on a walleye board. We got plenty of practice checking boards this morning. I'd estimate about one out of every 20 board drops was actually a dink. The rest? Weeds!
Where the hell were all the boats? Lake St. Clair is usually jam-packed. Today? Nothing. Apparently everyone pulled their boats after Labor Day. Fine by me!
I started the morning with a variety of crankbaits because, for some reason, I continually try to prove that I don't need to run Flicker Shads. Then I eventually end up with nothing but Flicker Shads on the rods…Every…Single…Time. They're just really freaking good lures. I should probably stop fighting it.
After more than five months of using Tekota 700s and 800s in Ludington, those little 600s felt like toys. Combine that with only six rods, crankbaits running 40-60 feet behind the boards and only two people on the boat...This was vacation fishing! I loved it.
Rookie moves today: No BoatMeal™ supplies, no After Fishing Mints™, no size 8 fishing boots.
If anyone lost the Offshore Board out there, hit me up. It came with everything pictured.
Four weekends remain before the Tiara gets pulled. This little Lake St. Clair break was fun. Actually, it was probably needed. But now I'm ready to get back to Ludington and hit it hard.
Four weekends. No tournaments to worry about. No Bonanza to chase. No more hammers. Just hogs, fishing buddies, BoatMeals™, After Fishing Mints™, and as much fun as we can possibly cram into the final month.
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