TRENTON, Mich. – Move over tubes, there’s a new goby on the rock.
Ever since the round goby found its way from foreign waters into the Great Lakes, they have become like the Snickers candy bars of the smallmouth world.
Editor’s Note: Click here for more information about gobies, including photos and areas they have invaded.
Gobies are bottom dwelling creatures and smallmouth love to snarf up the 3 to 5 inch long creatures from rocks and reefs in the Great Lakes.
Over the last several years, bass anglers have used plastic tube jigs in various hues of green as goby imitating baits. But now Poor Boy’s Baits out of Orland, Ind., has started pouring a plastic imitation goby and the bait has developed quite a following.
Several weeks ago Jim Liechty of Fort Wayne, Ind., won the Michigan Division BFL out of the Detroit River on the bait and now he is in third place in the EverStart Series Northern thanks to the plastic goby.
And Liechty is not the only Great Lakes pro carrying a load of gobies around in his boat; Steve Clapper of Lima, Ohio, currently in fifth, has also been using the goby all week.
Most of these pros are drop-shotting the goby on 8- to 10- pound test line with an 8- to 18- inch leader. They are nose hooking the goby with a small circle-style hook.
Liechty prefers a 1/0 Owner Mosquito Hook. Others are dressing it up with small red hook for a little more flash.
They are fishing the drop-shot goby on isolated rock piles in 15 to 30 feet of water.
Whether the goby will be victorious today remains to be seen.
The top 10 pros and 10 co-anglers will only have to deal with northeast winds of 10 mph today, as opposed to the stiff 15 mph breeze that hindered pros yesterday.
Many of the leaders said that if they could get back to their fish and fish them right today, more big stringers would be coming in at this afternoon’s weigh-in.
The final weigh-in starts at 3:30 Eastern time at the Taylor, Mich., Wal-Mart on Telegraph Road.