Location: Lake St Clair and the St Clair River
Fishing
Time: May 18-22
Weather: Rain and Wind the entire trip. Temperature ranged from high 50s to 70s. Wind
gusts were over 25 mph every day and night.
Moon Phase: 5% Waxing Moon
Water Temps: 48-52 degrees in the St Clair River,
and 62-67 degrees in Lake St Clair
Best Baits: St Clair River – vampire colored fluke
with a stinger on a 1 oz jig head. Lake St Clair – white or green pumpkin
minnow on a drop shot rig
Who Went: Bobber John, Sean Mitchell, Dunc
We rented an Airbnb on the famous Lake St Clair just outside of Detroit, Michigan during
the smallmouth spawn. Lake St Clair is
known to produce smallmouth bass over 6 pounds, with 4-pound bass being common.
We hit the spawn just right, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. The first two days were monsoon like rain most
of the day and the rest of the trip was a consistent 15-20 mph wind with gusts
over 30 mph! Not ideal conditions, especially
with the lake being shallow water. When
the wind picks up the lake is terrifying.
We rented an Airbnb right on the lake which added to the ambiance of the trip. Instead of a
day by day report I’m just going to summarize our results from the lake and the
river.
LAKE ST CLAIR – With some research we found a good area where the smallmouth were spawning. The water was never calm enough to sight fish, but the number of boats congregated in one area gave it away.
We joined the masses and did well catching multiple 3-4 pound smallmouth for stretches with other times during high winds and waves where it slowed down significantly. Our biggest bass of the trip was a 4.1-pound smallmouth caught by Bobber John.
I had a few good runs where I
caught a lot of 3-pound fish in a short period of time. I think with good weather our entire trip
would have been consistent catching. The
best producing bait was a green pumpkin power minnow rigged on a drop shot rig. The fish were spawning in water from 5-8 feet
deep.
We fished the canals and marinas off Lake St Clair a little bit with most of our success coming from the metro park area where I landed a few decent largemouth bass on a weightless senko. Other areas produced nothing and I think the post storm cold had them cranky. I really wanted to try musky fishing, but the wind and waves made it to difficult to even try.
ST CLAIR RIVER –
The river was beautiful flowing with glacier water coming down from Lake Huron. It reminded me of the same turquoise blue I’m
used to seeing in Bear Lake, Utah. The fishing was slow, but we did land enough
walleye to keep us interested. The river moves quick and the key is to keep
your bait vertical as possible while drifting.
We also fished
the marinas and bays off the river where we found quite a few northern pike willing
to bite, and a few smallmouth bass as well.
The river and its bays were much colder water which the pike seemed to
like. At times we were getting follows
or bites on every cast. I ended up
catching one decent pike that may have went 30-inches with a bit more shoulders
than the rest of our catches.
We also tried
sturgeon fishing on the river for a couple hours on our last day but didn’t get
a bite before the boat batteries died and ended our trip a couple hours earlier
than expected.
ADVENTURES – Other adventures on the trip were a couple nights of spotlighting where we found some very cool creatures of the night. We were able to catch two giant snapping turtles. This was on my bucket list so it made my entire trip!
We also found a cool mud puppy
which is apparently a rare find! It was so cool and I didn’t know they existed.
We also netted a long nose gar to get a closer look and they are weird looking. I didn’t realize how bony and tough their
skin was.
The last
adventure was me renting a car on the last day of the trip and driving across
the country to get home! I skipped my
flight in Cincinnati, Ohio and drove across Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska,
and Wyoming before making it back to my home state of Utah after 24 hours of
driving. I stayed one night in Lincoln,
Nebraska to break it up. It was fun but exhausting. I’ve always wanted to do
it, but I think it was a one and done.
It was a lot of driving!
