Lake St Clair Bass Fishing Report August 10, 2019
We caught bass most places but this was the best of the day at 5 pounds
- Air temp: Mid 80’s
- St. Clair River 73 degrees
- Canada: 73 degrees
- U.S. (Mile Roads): 75 degrees
Catching a day where Lake St. Clair is tame can make all the difference in covering the big water. That’s what we faced which then opens up the conversation to: “What water do we fish?”
For my partner, it was all about finding the big fish. That put us more in the middle of the Lake with a tendency to cover water in Canada.
Although we were catching, size wasn’t coming so we moved around some in the general area where he had found smallies before. We caught bass, found some zones but still no big bite yet.
There has been a shift in location for a lot of these deeper fish at this point in the season. It happened last year at almost the same time. For a month or so, fishing was easy and a community hole developed along the South Shore. Next thing we know the schools were gone but were rediscovered miles to the east.
To eliminate the area we were fishing, we went shallower with more weed, caught a few. We went deeper, then deeper, then deeper, and caught some there too. Eventually, we ended up stopping at a random spot along the way back to the U.S. and picked up this nice smallie, then an equally big drum.
Drum, or “sheepshead” are an excellent indicator that the bigger smallmouth are nearby.
For me, it was all about continuing to prove out a new bait design, “Gizzard Shad™.” I was not disappointed. Everywhere we went Gizzard Shad continued to perform well on the bass that were available. I was particularly happy to have it on when we saw a school of smallies busting the surface in 18 feet of water. We never got close enough to hook up, but it I felt quite confident with the minnow imitator on the line at that moment.
Gizzard Shad 4″ tube as a swim bait.
I was able to put smallmouth in the boat with Gizzard Shad by swimming it, plus using it as a drop-shot tube in the 2 ¾” and 4” sizes.
The previous day, my partner and I spent our time in the St. Clair River channel system. We hit a wide range of structure on spots with meager results.
Early on, it was looking like there might be a stronger migration up the St. Clair River this year. As of this writing, I would say that we may be looking at an 8th straight season of lower numbers in the river. The river can work, it just takes more time to locate and stay on top of smaller schools.
Here are the Marked Map™ spots that we hit:
- MR #7 & #17 Average bass
- BRH #14 Avg bass (west of this spot)
- SLF #20 Zero
- LNC #18 Zero
- UNC #14 Avg
- USC #7 Zero, #8 & 9 Avg
- LSC #9 Avg
- SCL #13 Tournament Quality (south of this spot)
Category: Bass Lake/River Reports, Feature, Fishing, Uncategorized
