Although it wasn’t much, I was able to get out on Lake James Saturday morning for a little bit and do some research.  What I found is that it won’t even resemble the same body of water we fished a year ago.  Water temps were about 70 degrees and the lake looked like Devils Lake on a warm summer day.  There were pleasure boaters galore and a 30 boat tournament going on just for good measure. 

Although the chain is fairly big acreage wise, the fact that it’s segmented into several smaller lakes makes it feel quite cramped.  The weather is going to be warm tomorrow as well so expect more of the same.  I didn’t catch any fish, in fact I never even made a cast but instead looked around and tried to avoid the boat traffic.

I saw many empty beds but to tell you the truth, sight fishing on the main lakes are pretty tough anyway with all the waves.  I saw maybe 3 fish on beds but I’m not sure they’d even be legal so I’m saying this will primarily be a post-spawn event.  Any good bed fish that were around were probably picked off by the Anglers of Men tournament today so I’m getting that out of my mind right away.  I was only on the water for about 2 1/2 hours so I didn’t see it all.   Maybe some others have beds located but it will be just a couple I’m sure. 

The water is very clear everywhere I went which was just about in all the lakes other than the Otters.  There was a good breeze out today which helped but in the backwater areas it was very still and the fish saw me coming from a mile away.  Since I didn’t fish I’m not sure what the best way to catch them will be as of right now so that means I’ll have 10 rods on deck. 

The launch is located on Lane 385 which is the first one you come to off I-69 when traveling west on HWY 120.  It is about 1/4 mile past the outlet malls.  Remember to get your Indiana licenses which you can purchase online at the Indiana DNR or Indiana.gov website.  I’ll see everyone in the morning.

Has it really been 7 months since our last tournament?  It doesn’t seem fair but it will all be good this Sunday as our club opens the regular season with the first event on Lake James in Fremont, Indiana.  I’m as pumped up as anyone and could care less where it’s at, I’m just ready to get going.  Hope to see a good turnout for the first sanctioned club event which will be our second time opening on James.  If anyone has not paid their yearly entry fee ($15) they can still fish, just sign up that morning and you’ll be good for the remainder of the season.

As for the fishing, I expect it to be mostly a post-spawn event with some fish still being found on beds.  The beds that are still active will most likely be occupied with small males and finding keepers on them will be a challenge.  Water temps should start to approach 70 degrees by Sunday and the early spring probably had most of the fish spawning a few weeks back.  I expect a few good beds to be found but they will be few and far between.

Lots of fish will be shallow and catching numbers shouldn’t be an issue but anyone who comes in a limit should finish high in the standings.  Three and four pounders will be scarce but if you can find one or two then that will be the key as far as I’m concerned.  I could be wrong but 10 pounds will be an excellent wight.  I’ve been wrong before ( I thought Lake Ovid would be tough last year) but those big females tend to vanish for a while right after spawning.

We’ll be launching at the Otter Lake ramp which is different from last year when we went out of Jimmerson.  The launch is closer to the highway but we’ll have a pretty good idle to the rest of the chain unless you decide to stay put in Otter.  After the no-wake channel we enter Snow Lake on the east side for those not familiar with that area.  I’m not sure what kind of turnout we’ll have this year but if anyone is looking for a ride than contact me or Scott Hartman and we’ll try and pair non-boaters up with a partner.  I’ll pass along any good recent info but I’m not practicing until Saturday and don’t know of anyone else who is.  I guess we’re all just showing up and fishing.

With the Spring Open on Michigan Center just two weeks away I just wanted to keep everyone in the loop as to what’s going on.  First off we have about a dozen pre-paid entries which is pretty good this far out.  Last year we had less than 10 total before tourney day.  Most teams pay the morning of but with a 49 team cutoff that is strictly enforced, it might be wise to pre-pay.  We had 34 teams last year and I think it should be bigger this year so 49 is very reasonable.  The DNR requires a permit for any tournament over 50 boats so that’s the reason for the limit.

Flyers have been mailed to about 90 addresses and tourney director Scott Hartman will start his “Flyer distribution” program this week.  This is basically him putting entry forms on windshields at boat launches but it seemed to work fairly well last year.  I would guess we’ll get a few more pre-paid entries before the opener and Scott has had several folks contacting him about the event so my guess is that it’ll exceed last years’ turnout for sure.

As for the fishing, I’m going out tomorrow on Center and have heard that they’re biting pretty well out there right now.  I was out a week ago and spotted several beds but sight fishing might be over with by tourney day.  I think it took 16 pounds to win last year which is a pretty good weight for Center but 14 might be a good goal if you have plans on winning.  Center has a bunch of guys that fish nothing else and they’re tough to beat out there so it should be a great event.  Get your forms in, remember that boat order is based on the order your payment was received.  I’ll post any lake info when I get out later in the week.

With our lakes covered by ice for 4 months out of the year, the open water seasons are somewhat accelerated up north compared to southern waters.  Spawning seasons last up to 4 months in Florida but in Michigan most of that takes place during the month of may.  With the warm March we’ve had it might really speed up the process this year, especially when it comes to bedding bass.  This has become quite evident over the past few weeks with water conditions changing daily.  For example, I was on Lake St. Clair last Tuesday and had water temps in the high 40′s and by Sunday they were nearly 60 degrees.  A ten degree warm up coupled with a full moon last weekend and a huge wave of spawning bass have begun to invade the shallows.

I saw water temps spike up around here as well as Devils and Center rose almost 15 degrees in about a ten day period.  I would say that although all the fish in the lakes don’t spawn at the same time, most are getting it on right now.  The weather is looking pretty stable for the coming week so I don’t think things will change too much and we very well could be looking at a post-spawn event in two weeks at Lake James.  I’m sure there will still be a few fish on beds but from what I’ve seen lately I don’t think a sight fishing pattern will dominate  our first tournament.  I plan on going down to Indiana in about a week and will detail all my findings.  Most of them anyway.

I’ve heard reports about guys going out on Lake St. Clair in the spring and catching 50-100 fish a day but have never experienced it myself.  I hadn’t been there for pre-spawn action in several years and decided this would be the year.  With cold temps last weekend and rain forecasted for the coming one, I decided Tuesday would be the best weather day of the week and luckily I had work off.  Fellow club member Craig Deck was off as well so this would be our fishing day and the weather was supposed to be calm and sunny.

Well we never saw the sun all day but when we launched the boat at 9 mile we had calm winds which is always a blessing on the big lake.  Water temps were 48-49 degrees, a little colder than I expected but I’d caught them in cold water over the weekend so maybe it wouldn’t matter.  With all the east winds and rain the lake had received lately the water was pretty murky with clarity of about 2 1/2 feet which is pretty muddy for LSC.  We expected this and knew from past experiences that tube fishing would be slow and the crankbait would be a better option.

We started out on some rock reefs near the 9 mile tower and we both hooked up immediately, nothing huge but a good start.  I caught a large musky and Craig caught a few small ones before we decided to move.  A few more reefs that resulted in very little and after the first hour it seemed like my 50 fish day would not materialize.  But we were getting a few here and there so it was pretty enjoyable so far.  We headed north towards the 11 mile area where there are huge gravel flats with boulders mixed in.  Several bass boats were out in the 10 foot area but I had a few GPS coordinates in shallower.  There is a small slightly deeper weed trough that cuts through the gravel flat and we hoped this would be a good staging area for bass to feed at before moving shallow to spawn.

Craig hooked up with three fish before I even got a bite and when I did, it was another musky.  At least Craig was having a good time.  We could tell we were into the weeds because my partner started catching largemouth mixed in with the smallies.  And every largie he caught was at least 3 pounds.  These fish would feel like dead weight at first, then shake their heads, open their mouths and fight all the way to the boat despite the cold water.  Craig was putting a whipping on me with his Bomber Fat Free Shad crankbait in the rootbeer color.  I switched to a medium diving Norman Middle N crank in a natural shad color and started catching up quickly.  We went back and forth over this area and caught fish steadily for

about an hour.  We noticed some of the boats out deeper started to creep into our area as our rods were constantly bent over which is a common tactic on St. Clair.  We didn’t mind and actually left for a while to look for some shallower beds that I’ve fished in the past.

The water was too muddy to see any beds so we started blind casting, hoping to contact a bed.  I never got a bite but Craig hooked up with three good females, all 3-4 pounds on a tube.  Since we couldn’t sight fish we headed north once again to fish a sprawling gravel flat that had boulders and weed patches mixed in.  Craig caught one small one and after 30 minutes we abandoned this area.  Why not try our weed trough one more time after giving the fish time to rest up?  We headed back and as expected had several boats right on top of our prime area.  No problem as I had a 3 pound brawler smash my crankbait on the first cast and we went back to hammering them.

We were now up to about 35 fish with a little less than 2 hours remaining and decided to head back to the rock reefs at 9 mile.  I hoped the fish had become more active later in the day and our hunch was right on.  These fish were not only aggressive but much bigger in size than up lake.  Our average was about 2 pounds with a few 3′s and 4′s before but once we got back down south the average fish was 3 pounds or better.  I caught two 4 pounders on consecutive casts and Craig caught our first 5 pounder a few casts later, all on the same reef!  We hooked a few more muskie but had some more reefs to hit before quitting time.  It was hard to move off that spot.

Our next reef wasn’t as big as the last one but there was something special about it.  I changed back to a deeper diving Norman Little N crankbait and Craig was still throwing his trusty rootbeer medium diver.  It didn’t seem to matter as we caught about 15 fish in the next 30 minutes, including several doubles and actually caught four smallmouth on five consecutive casts between the two of us.  I can’t count how many doubles we had during the day but it seemed when one guy caught one you could cast to the exact spot and catch one automatically.  The bite was getting better and we were up to 50 fish.

Unfortunately it was getting late and we had to leave by 2pm but a few more reefs served up several more fish and when we hit 60 we called it a day.  Six hours and 60 fish between two guys, not that’s an awesome day.  I know we could have caught 100 had we stayed out a few more hours but we had a blast and the boat was trashed.  Our best 5 fish went over 20 pounds easily and although we only caught one five pounder, I bet we had another 5 that went over four pounds.  Multiple threes and maybe 3 or 4 fish that were sub-legal size.

It’s going to rain for the next few days but next weekend it could get sunny and I’d love to go back but my work schedule may not allow it.  I want to thank Craig for being such a good co-angler and we had a great time although the smallies wouldn’t let us get much of a chance to talk during the day.  Most of the fish hit crankbaits which I felt was the key to entice bites in the dingy water.  We both used 10 pound fluorocarbon line and caught most of our fish from 4-7 fow.  I wish our June event would produce catches like that but anything will seem like a letdown compared to yesterday.  Hope everyone gets to enjoy a day like that this year, it was quite enjoyable.

I promise I won’t detail every outing for the entire year but this time of year is pretty exciting and things are changing rather quickly.  I hope to keep everyone updated on water conditions more than anything so when guys get out on the water they know what to expect.

Jim VanAken, Scott Hartman and I all went down to Devils Lake Sunday morning and didn’t really know what to expect when we got there.  We had a lot of cold rain the day before and the air temps were in the 20′s Saturday night so the fish were sure to be affected.  The first thing I noticed was how many bass boats were in the parking lot which should have been expected seeing it is opening weekend.

We headed to a few well known bedding areas first but only caught a few smaller bass and didn’t see much else.  We had water temps around 48 degrees which is where I had them Saturday morning as well.  But the sun was out which was good although a stiff east wind made it challenging.  We fished a few deeper points and caught a handful of largemouth on suspending jerkbaits but nothing huge.  We did see a few more smallmouth beds with nothing on them and decided to try and get out of the wind.

One thing I’ve learned over the past few years when targeting bedding smallies is how shallow they make their beds sometimes.  I talked to former club member Russ Bissell on the water and he said he’d contacted some decent fish “really shallow” so with calmer water and this advice, that’s what we decided to do.  It paid off pretty well as we caught our biggest fish that was on a bed in about 2.5 feet of water.  The smallmouth went about 3lbs and fell victim to a chartreuse tube.  We caught several more smaller fish on beds along this shallow flat and a few decent largemouth just out cruising.  Most of the “non-bedding” fish came on pink or white Zoom Super Flukes which is my favorite bait to throw this time of year.

We ended up catching about 15-20 fish with a 50/50 mix of largemouth and smallmouth.  The sun was helpful in locating beds and I think that lake will be really good in a few days once it warms up.  The water temps had climbed into the low 50′s by 2pm and my guess is that it’s only going to get warmer this week.  The fishing could be awesome by this coming weekend so if you’re thinking of getting the boat out, do it.

Lake St. Clair tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have one more good report to post by weeks end.  I heard they were catching 30-40 Sunday and one post I read they claimed to have caught over 100.  If the sun is out it should be great but I’m sure we’ll have a good day either way.  Reports to follow.

Got out today for the bass opener and had a pretty decent outing before the weather got really bad.  It was pretty cold early and the water temps were about 49 degrees but I wasn’t going to let that slow us down.  I took my youngest brother Craig out and we had a great outing.  I’d say we caught between 30-40 fish and actually found quite a few smallmouth on beds.  We didn’t catch anything huge, probably 3.5 lbs was the biggest but I did lose one that was 4+ which is becoming a regular habit for me.

Most of our fish came on Zoom Super Flukes but I caught several on tubes and a suspending jerkbait.  This weather has been crazy this spring and I bet the water was 10 degrees warmer last month but I’m not complaining.  It was fun to get out with my brother which doesn’t happen that often and to catch that many was an unexpected surprise with such cold water.  I’m hoping to get out again tomorrow and the weather should subside a little but I’m not sure how the fishing will be.  I go whenever I can, regardless of the weather so I’ll just make the best of it.  Devils Lake is where we hope to go and hopefully the smallies will still be on beds down there.

The weather is going to improve later next week and with the full moon happening, it should get pretty good.  Of course I’m working next weekend so I’ll have to rely on reports from buddies to get me through the weekend.  I also plan on hitting St. Clair early in the week so weather permitting I’ll have plenty to report on from Detroit.  Hope everyone got a chance to get out this weekend, it’s an awesome time to be on the water.

Hope the weather cooperates but it doesn’t look good right now but we’re two days away from the bass season opener.  I don’t care if it’s 45 degrees (which it might be) I’ll be out there.  I’ve got my license, my gear is in order and the boat is gassed up.  Even though I’ve already been bass fishing out of state  this season, opening day is always special to me.  My brother and I are headed to Clarks Lake hoping to catch some pre-spawn smallies and possibly some bedders.  It will be warmer next week and I’ll be out several times over the next few days.  Reports and pics to follow, I can’t wait.