Lake St. Clair Bass Fishing Report 07-28-2017
North winds were up and gusting to 20 plus mph this day. It made areas and spots in the south part of the Lake less accessible, so most of our efforts were focused in the north zone, and the St. Clair River.
In trips earlier in the week, we have been doing well and had expectations of a good bite today. With a lot of spot checking and effort, small schools of bass were found. The quality of those bass has been high. On this day, we failed to break the 4lb mark, but numbers of smallmouth were no problem.
Randy Forszt boats one of many smallmouth caught on this trip
I was fortunate to fish with a friend from Indiana, Randy Forszt. Randy has been coming up and fishing with me for at least a decade so we were able to put together a comprehensive game plan that included Lake and River spots.
White bass were everywhere. Finding action on the surface with the white bass was easy. They are very active feeders. The good news is that the smalllies were mixed in with them.
Over the last few years, smallies haven’t been showing much aggression with the bite. My take on that is since there are less in the river system, there is less competition for food. The forage base for bass has shifted toward more emerald shiners, alewife and shad. Now the bass are competing directly for food with the white bass, and the smallmouth bite is very aggressive right now.
A baitfish that was left on the boat by a smallmouth next to an Xtreme Bass Tackle Swim-X
Several baits have been standing tall. Tubes have dominate with Canadian Mist, St. Clair Goby NFT and St. Clair Crayfish leading the way. Also strong have been crankbaits and swimbaits. You can see the photo with an alewife spit up by a bass next to and Xtreme Bass Tackle Swim-X swimbait.
SUMMER PATTERNS EMERGING
We are just starting to see the emergence of summer bite patterns. Remnants of the post-spawn period still persist though so how do we put the current status of the system in our favor? Follow the migrating bass.
What we found were multiple transition spots that had groups of bass on them. A couple of those had big numbers with big size mixed in. Transition spots are firing up as migrating bass move across them, and hold for a short period.
Pretty soon, expect spots to hold up from week-to-week. As summer bite smallmouth become color selective, the color of bait you are throwing will also begin to have a big impact.
SEE VIDEO OF OUR TRIP
If you are interested in finding the Xtreme Bass Tackle Swim-X or tubes, you can find them at:
Sportsmen’s Direct at Jefferson and Metro Parkway
or online at:
The Xtreme Bass Tackle website
Category: Bass Lake/River Reports, Feature
