I know it's two weeks away from the club tourney on Lake St. Clair but I haven't been there yet this year and couldn't wait any longer. Fellow club member Scott Hartman joined me Saturday for a little practice session and it was also his first trip to the big lake ever. I wouldn't say I was a great guide but we did manage to catch a few and I'll pass along what we discovered.
First of all, the lake seems to be several weeks ahead of where it was at this point last season. The spawn is over, the mayflies have already had a big hatch and the weeds are quite dense all the way out into deep water. I've heard most of the good limits on the American side have come in 12-15 foot of water which I thought was pretty deep for July 3rd but we found that to be the case.
Scott and I started down by the 11 mile area and fished the shallower 6-8 fow rocky flats. After only minimal success we headed out to the 12-14 ft area and found the weeds to be fairly heavy even that far out. Dragging tubes was virtually impossible in the dense vegetation so we started just hopping and ripping the baits out of the grass. We periodically ventured back in shallower to the 10-11 ft depths where the weeds were more scattered but never got a bite in anything less than 12 foot of water.
One other interesting tidbit is that we caught mostly largemouth, even out to 14 foot and of the 15 fish caught, most were green. We observed lots of small fry swimming around but never saw fish around them. Later in the day we locked into the deeper water and had a pretty good flurry right before we left at noon.
Scott ended up catching 4 keepers and the big fish of the day which was a 3+ pound smallmouth and lost one that was probably bigger. I caught a small limit of 2 pound largemouth and eliminated a lot of water. The fish seem to be quite deep and I have a feeling may start to relate to current areas like the channels which are typical late summer patterns. I'll be out hopefully later this week and will post any findings.
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