A sea of boats
A full field starts second EverStart Series Northern Division event on Detroit River
TRENTON, Mich. – While the Wal-Mart FLW Tour and three divisions of the EverStart Series have already concluded their regular-season competition for 2004, the Northern Division of the EverStart Series is just getting cranked up.
Wednesday morning a full field of 200 pros and 200 co-anglers launched from Elizabeth Park on the Detroit River to start the second Northern Division event of the season presented by Schick Quattro.
Among those 200 pros launching this morning were some notable faces from the FLW Tour. Most of Team Snickers – including Pat Fisher of Dacula, Ga., Chris Baumgardner of Gastonia, N.C., and David Lauer of South Bend, Ind. – were present.
Also, most of the Kellogg’s team – including Clark Wendlandt of Cedar Park, Texas, Jim Tutt of Longview, Texas, and Dave Lefebre of Erie, Pa. – were also on hand to sample some Northern Division EverStart competition.
It seems these top pros can’t get enough bass fishing. But then again, this is no ordinary fishery; this is Lake Erie, where big smallmouths suck down tube jigs like candy.
Energizer pro J.T. Kenney of Frostburg, Md., says that fishing for smallmouths in Lake Erie is something akin to deep-sea fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s like those big saltwater charter boats that take you out in the middle of nowhere and say, `drop your lines here,’ and you drag a bait around until you get a bite,” Kenney said. “This is no different. You ride out into the middle of Lake Erie, drop a tube down into about 15 to 20 feet of water, and just drift around waiting for a bite – it’s crazy.”
It’s a kind of fishing that Clark Wendlandt, as he put it, “just can’t get into.”
“I tried fishing over there (Erie) a few days, but I don’t like it because I really don’t understand that kind of fishing,” he said. “I love fishing for smallmouth, but I like making them react on a bait. The water in Erie is dirty, and the fish live out deep on expansive underwater reefs that you have to drift for miles to find.”
Since the tournament is launching out of the Detroit River, Wendlandt has other options.
“I’m going over to St. Clair to fish, where the water is clearer,” he added. “It might be a mistake, but at least I understand what those fish are doing.”
Pat Fisher is also opting to go to St. Clair for his fishing.
“I never got on them real good in Erie,” he said. “The ones I caught were huge smallmouth, but I just can’t get enough bites to make it worth it.”
These FLW Tour big guns may have shown up in Detroit in hopes of taking advantage of the $256, 825 total purse, but it’s the local “draggers” that bear watching in this event.
Pros like Steve Clapper of Lima, Ohio, Joe Balog of Harrison Township, Mich., and Mark Zona of Sturgis, Mich., have made an art out of dragging tubes in the depths of Erie to catch big smallmouths.
And, at least for today, the weather is siding with the draggers. Anglers launched into a small rain shower this morning, but the wind was calm – a big factor in the Lake Erie equation.
Big wind means big waves on Erie, and it hampers fishing efforts in every way from navigation to standing up in the boat. Several anglers even admitted to succumbing to motion sickness in practice earlier in the week.
As one angler blurted out from the damp darkness this morning, “I’ll take rain over wind any day on this pond!”
The forecast of southwest winds up to 10 mph with a 30 percent chance of rain should make for some big bags at weigh-in today.
The weigh-in will begin at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time today at the Elizabeth Park Marina.
Wednesday’s conditions:
Air temperature: 72 degrees
Water temperature: 70-75 degrees
Wind: forecasted from the southwest at 10 mph
Day’s outlook: partly cloudy, high of 88 degrees with a 30 percent chance of thundershowers