Sunday, Lake St. Clair, Michigan
Dan writes:
Up at 4am to start converting my gear and my mindset back over to smallmouth fishing. File away the Wisonsin maps, dig out the St. Clair maps and all my notes. Using the new Lowrance mapping software, download from the X15 to a file on my computer my GPS waypoints from the Mississippi River, and then upload back to the GPS the St. Clair coordinates that were saved last week. Restring ten-pound test line on a few rods for dragging a tube in the clear water. Wake Annie at 5am, and drive over to the launch ramp to meet Dick at 6.
Dick and I discussed strategy. He has fished just two days here, caught a few up in the north end, not done much down around the mile roads, and went to Detroit yesterday, where he couldn’t locate keeper fish either. I told him what I had done last week when we were here, and then we split up for the day.
Annie and I launched the boat and set out to fish a hump in Anchor Bay. First we tried to fish a hump out in Anchor Bay, but it was just too so windy and rough, and the pleasure boat traffic was just awful. The cruisers on this lake will run right at a bass boat just sitting still out there… we had it happen to us three times today and could have hit each one with a long cast of a 3/4 ounce spinner bait, and one of them ran right over my marker buoy, which disappeared and was never recovered.
We then started working our way down the west side of the lake. We fished many different areas from Anchor Bay all the way down to the mouth of the Detroit River, which is where I had my best day in pre-practice, but never found the big fish. I estimate that between us we caught 75 bass today, but out of that number perhaps only five were fourteen-inch keeper size, with the biggest being no more than two pounds.
We pulled the boat out at 7pm, after a long day on the water which accomplished nothing but eliminating a lot of water. Tomorrow it will be critical to find some bigger fish.
Annie writes:
Awoke at 5:00am, packed our lunch bag, and spent the day with Dan out in the boat. He does not have much practice time, so I figured I would go with him to try and help. It is a weekend, so the lake was extremely busy, I do not think I have ever seen as many boats on one lake as I did today. It was pretty windy on the ride out and the waves were splashing into the boat regularly, except that they only seemed to be coming in on my side. I was drenched when we got to our first spot and Dan was dry. He found it amusing and I told him I was just proving my love for him. We spent the whole day working hard, and we caught a lot of fish, but not that many keepers. On the way home the roles were reversed and Dan was soaking wet by the time we got to the launch ramp. It was my turn to laugh.
All in all, we had a good day and he got the last laugh because due to our ongoing bet, whoever catches the least amount of fish cooks dinner, I had to cook. We slept right where we were parked, at the launch ramp, overnight, this worked out great, seeing that the nearest campground is about an hour away.