Fishing Trips 2004

FISHING TRIPS 2004 Page 1

May 18-21, 2004--LAKE ST. CLAIR

Tim, Dan, Craig, Earl and I went up to Lake St. Clair for our first fishing trip of the year. We were greeted with 65-67 degree water temperatures and a north wind. The water temps dropped a bit during our few days of fishing and the winds occasionally blew hard from all directions. The drift sock was put to good use.

We did manage to catch 5 or 6 big walleye and some good size perch and rock bass with an occasional smallmouth thrown in. Dan had the hot hand of the trip, he out fished all of us! Spinner baits and grubs caught most of the fish. It seemed like the fish wanted our lures hopping instead of the usual drag method. Tubes did not produce as well as they normally do. A new spot dubbed the “Variety Pack” was found. It was named because of the variety of fish that were caught at that particular location.

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LSC June 2004

On the 11th of June I went with Tim, Dan, Jeff, Earl, and Heavy to Lake St. Clair to fish for a week. The lake was still cloudy from all the heavy rain that the area was experiencing during the past few weeks. On a good note the water level was up about a foot from the past couple of years.

We could not get a good bite in the shallower water on the main lake but found a few fish in the protected waters of Back Bay. Most of our fishing took place in about 14 foot of water in the main lake. I managed to land a big pike while Jeff “Cat Daddy” Chrowl wrestled in a big 10 pound catfish on 6 pound line! Jeff was hot all week with his “Woody Hayes” and his “Archie Griffin” color tubes.

Earl “Muskie Man” Crabtree had a couple of unusual and exciting adventures of the trip when twice on two different days a Muskie grab a rock bass as he was about to lift it into the boat with his rod. The first monster took the rocky and swam off with it with and Earl fought him for a while. The second one pulled drag and quickly snapped his line.

We found a few more productive spots to add to our knowledge base. The big area of 14 foot water was named the Kemba Hole and Heavy found a good shallow water spot dubbed the Georgia Hole.

LSC July 2004

"HOT TIME IN THE SUMMERTIME "

The last 3 days of July, Tim and Dan “Took a Kid (John) Fishing”. The expectation of this 2 and a half day trip was to catch some perch and maybe a few walleyes. It turned out to be a lot more than that.

During the first evening’s fishing, in the 2nd spot we tried, a 17ft hole nine miles out, we quickly abandoned the live bait rigs for tubes, grubs and sinkos. We scored 15 smallies!! The next morning started with a dead calm wind so we tried our luck in Mitchell’s Bay. To our surprise we caught a few real nice smallies in the Patricks cove area. It has been several years since we caught fish in the Bay.

With the continued calm winds we thought we would try out the river. We concentrated on the Kilpecker area. Boy was it hot!! Numerous river strong bronzbacks were caught and released. As an added bonus, Tim hooked and Dan netted a 40 inch musky. John caught his first pike and Dan grubbed out a Walleye. But the topper was when Tim was bringing in a smallie and John was on the net. As the fish was being boated suddenly another fish appeared and John netted both of them. One hit the tube and the other hit a net. Never seen that happen before!

All in all, the trip was a pleasant surprise. Fifty-Five smallmouths were caught and released. Nine different species found their way into the Starcraft. LSC was HOT!!!

Sept.30-Oct.7 2004

Tim and I went up to Lake St. Clair for a week where we met up with Al Bertke’s gang of 9 who fished Friday-Sunday and later Dan who fished Saturday-Tuesday. Also another couple of guys that Tim’s knows were up, Jamie and his uncle John. The water temperature was 63 degrees on Thursday afternoon and dropped throughout the week after two cold fronts moved through.

The smallmouth fishing was slow most of the week with the exception of a period where Al and his gang ran into a school of feeding smallies off of the sandbar. Most of the fish caught during the week were around the 3 lb range while several 4 and 5 pounders were caught. The bass were the typical full-bellied football shaped fall smallmouth that St. Clair is noted for.