Following the leaders

Miller, Clapper lead EverStart Northern competition into day three

TRENTON, Mich. – As Jeff Miller of Crestwood Ill., led the top 20 pros into day-three competition Friday morning at the EverStart Series Northern Division event on the Detroit River, his lead vanished.

Now that day three has begun, all the pros and co-anglers start from zero.

Like many EverStart pros, Miller has worked his way up from the Wal-Mart Bass Fisihing League ranks into the EverStart level. And like many EverStart pros, Miller works a full-time job while trying to build his tournament-fishing resume.

“I’m a union electrician in Illinois,” said the 33-year-old this morning. “I’ve fished BFLs for about eight years, and a few years ago I decided to step it up to EverStarts. This is my third season of EverStarts.”

While Miller is certainly in the hunt for a win, he claims to be more of a point fisherman.

“I think gathering points and making championship fields is important – it says a lot about ability and versatility,” he said. “Just as making Regionals were important to me in BFL, the EverStart Championship is a major goal of mine every year. I made it last year and I’m gunning for it again.”

No matter where Miller finishes at this event, it will be his highest finish in EverStart competition. His previous best finish was 23rd.

Another man to watch over the next couple of days is Lake Erie legend Steve Clapper of Lima, Ohio, who left the dock in second place this morning.

Clapper has racked up five BFL wins on the St. Clair-Detroit River-Lake Erie waterway and has second- and third-place EverStart finishes to his credit. Needless to say, he’s ready to win one.

With almost 30 years of fishing experience on Erie, Clapper has witnessed the unique evolution of this smallmouth fishery.

“Crawdads used to be the main diet of these smallmouth,” said the 56-year-old retired construction superintendent. “But then along came zebra muscles and gobies, and it completely changed the fishery.”

“It used to be after every tournament up here, I’d have to take a Shop-Vac and suck up all of the pinchers and crawdad pieces that the smallmouth would spit up in my livewell,” he continued. “Now they just spit up gobies.”

Clapper believes that crawdads were run out of their own ecosystem when the zebra muscles began covering up the rocks in Erie. Now smallmouths appear to feed mostly on gobies, which, in turn, have made the smallmouths more migratory.

“I used to believe that a smallmouth spent its entire life within the same half-mile area, because crawdads were always available to them,” he added. “But these big schools of gobies are migratory, and now the smallmouth have taken to following them around the lake.”

Clapper agrees that the influx of gobies is one thing that helped ignite the tube craze in the Northeast.

“I’m always hunting something different to throw for smallmouth,” he said. “But day in and day out, a tube is hard to beat because it looks just like a goby.”

However, Clapper has found something else to entice the smallies this week. Over the last two days he has caught most of his fish on a bait that he has not said much about.

Perhaps at this afternoon’s weigh-in, Clapper will provide a little more information about his newfound smallmouth catcher.

Today’s weigh-in for the top 20 pros and 20 co-anglers will be held at the Taylor Wal-Mart on Telegraph Road starting at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time.