Hamilton Reef
08-28-2005, 10:29 AM
Dragging tubes for bass `all about boat control' on Lake St. Clair
http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/statewide/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1124750401128950.xml&coll=1
Sunday, August 28, 2005 By Bob Gwizdz
MT. CLEMENS -- After an hour and a half of dragging tubes on the upper end of Lake St. Clair yielded just nice but unremarkable smallmouths, Kim Stricker made a pronouncement.
"This isn't right," the 53-year-old professional angler said. "We should be getting more bites. And we should be catching better fish."
So Stricker made an adjustment. We moved out from the 22-foot range we'd been fishing to 30 feet (and deeper). Over the next hour, we caught five nice smallmouths, including one that looked to be an honest 5 1/2-pounder.
And Sticker, who is a good enough angler to have fished his way into the 2000 BASS Classic, was tickled that he'd figured it out. He'd turned what had been a pretty fair day of fishing into a good one.
As it was, we'd started the morning fishing in the channels -- a time-tested summer strategy on this great lake -- and did reasonably well. We'd put eight bass (seven nice smallies and an undersized largemouth) in the boat by 11 a.m. by fishing the flats adjoining the channel. But after 90 minutes of nothing, we broke for lunch and changed patterns.
Dragging tubes is a new pattern on St. Clair. It started about the time the goby population began skyrocketing. Apparently, the gobies were hanging on the bottom in the channels and the smallmouths were down there scarfing them.
Stricker's approach is pretty simple. He casts out a tube and drags it behind the boat, at about a 45-degree angle from the rod to the bait, and slips downstream with the current, using the trolling motor to adjust his drift speed.
This is a bit different than the walleye approach, where anglers try to keep the jig directly below them. But, Stricker says he's done well getting away from the boat and when he's jigging in his normal range -- 18 to 20 feet or so -- there's a "spook factor" involved in this ultraclear water.
"Maybe in this deeper water it may not be that important," Stricker said.
As it was, he had adjusted for the deeper water, going from a standard 3/8th ounce jighead to a 1/2-ounce oval-shaped jighead (made by Laketown Tackle, Stricker calls it a "goby head"). We were using 4-inch Right Bite tubes in what are fairly standard goby colors -- if you're a stickler for detail, they were called Roadkill (a sort of green pumpkin with flakes) and Fred 147 (a dark watermelon with hologram slivers).
Dragging tubes is "all about boat control," Stricker said. "You have to keep the boat going at the right speed to keep the bait on the bottom and you have to adjust for the wind. Watch the depthfinder for structure elements -- bottom contrasts or sand grass."
Sand grass (Chara, pronounced like the feminine appellation Kara) is short vegetation that grows no more than a couple inches up off bottom. The fish use it, Stricker said, "like kindergartners use their blankets at nap time. They just cozy up to it."
Depth "is critical," Stricker said.
"Once you find them at a certain depth, you want to repeat that same drift."
The other factor is an extreme hook-set.
"It's real important to have a big, sweeping hook set to pull that bow out of the line," Stricker said.
A flick of the wrist won't catch it.
Stricker says the tube-dragging pattern will continue at least through September, but it isn't the only pattern to consider.
Fact is, Stricker had invited me to show me his new bait, a soft-plastic jerk bait he designed for Shubert's Lures called a Strick-9 (that's one of his nicknames) A-Salt (pronounced "assault"). It's a salted (hence the name), scented (anise or garlic) minnow imitator designed to be fished with a walking-the-dog sort of darting motion.
Stricker outfished me handily with it, but acknowledged that part of the reason was how he was rigged. He was using 17-pound fluorocarbon line. I was using ordinary 14-pound mono. Fluorocarbon, unlike ordinary mono, sinks. He was getting better depth on his retrieve than I was.
"I feel like 17-pound fluorocarbon and a 3/0 Gamakatsu extra wide-gap hook gives that bait just the right speed of fall," he said. "I don't like to add any additional weight. It takes away from the action."
The baits (coming to a tackle store near you soon) have a lot of built-in wiggle because of the unusually soft plastic, which, Stricker said, also causes the fish to hang on to the bait a little longer.
That, however, was hardly an issue: Most of our fish came from the edge of the weeds where the flat dropped off and you could see them dart out and inhale it. Good Polaroid glasses help here -- if you see a fish chase but refuse to commit, you can slow it down, twitch it or whatever, to trip its switch.
The best part of the day, however, was what we saw out of the lake. Our best five fish would have scared the heck out of 20 pounds, which is the way things used to be on St. Clair, but haven't been in the last few years.
Make no mistake: Lake St. Clair is back.
http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/statewide/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1124750401128950.xml&coll=1
Sunday, August 28, 2005 By Bob Gwizdz
MT. CLEMENS -- After an hour and a half of dragging tubes on the upper end of Lake St. Clair yielded just nice but unremarkable smallmouths, Kim Stricker made a pronouncement.
"This isn't right," the 53-year-old professional angler said. "We should be getting more bites. And we should be catching better fish."
So Stricker made an adjustment. We moved out from the 22-foot range we'd been fishing to 30 feet (and deeper). Over the next hour, we caught five nice smallmouths, including one that looked to be an honest 5 1/2-pounder.
And Sticker, who is a good enough angler to have fished his way into the 2000 BASS Classic, was tickled that he'd figured it out. He'd turned what had been a pretty fair day of fishing into a good one.
As it was, we'd started the morning fishing in the channels -- a time-tested summer strategy on this great lake -- and did reasonably well. We'd put eight bass (seven nice smallies and an undersized largemouth) in the boat by 11 a.m. by fishing the flats adjoining the channel. But after 90 minutes of nothing, we broke for lunch and changed patterns.
Dragging tubes is a new pattern on St. Clair. It started about the time the goby population began skyrocketing. Apparently, the gobies were hanging on the bottom in the channels and the smallmouths were down there scarfing them.
Stricker's approach is pretty simple. He casts out a tube and drags it behind the boat, at about a 45-degree angle from the rod to the bait, and slips downstream with the current, using the trolling motor to adjust his drift speed.
This is a bit different than the walleye approach, where anglers try to keep the jig directly below them. But, Stricker says he's done well getting away from the boat and when he's jigging in his normal range -- 18 to 20 feet or so -- there's a "spook factor" involved in this ultraclear water.
"Maybe in this deeper water it may not be that important," Stricker said.
As it was, he had adjusted for the deeper water, going from a standard 3/8th ounce jighead to a 1/2-ounce oval-shaped jighead (made by Laketown Tackle, Stricker calls it a "goby head"). We were using 4-inch Right Bite tubes in what are fairly standard goby colors -- if you're a stickler for detail, they were called Roadkill (a sort of green pumpkin with flakes) and Fred 147 (a dark watermelon with hologram slivers).
Dragging tubes is "all about boat control," Stricker said. "You have to keep the boat going at the right speed to keep the bait on the bottom and you have to adjust for the wind. Watch the depthfinder for structure elements -- bottom contrasts or sand grass."
Sand grass (Chara, pronounced like the feminine appellation Kara) is short vegetation that grows no more than a couple inches up off bottom. The fish use it, Stricker said, "like kindergartners use their blankets at nap time. They just cozy up to it."
Depth "is critical," Stricker said.
"Once you find them at a certain depth, you want to repeat that same drift."
The other factor is an extreme hook-set.
"It's real important to have a big, sweeping hook set to pull that bow out of the line," Stricker said.
A flick of the wrist won't catch it.
Stricker says the tube-dragging pattern will continue at least through September, but it isn't the only pattern to consider.
Fact is, Stricker had invited me to show me his new bait, a soft-plastic jerk bait he designed for Shubert's Lures called a Strick-9 (that's one of his nicknames) A-Salt (pronounced "assault"). It's a salted (hence the name), scented (anise or garlic) minnow imitator designed to be fished with a walking-the-dog sort of darting motion.
Stricker outfished me handily with it, but acknowledged that part of the reason was how he was rigged. He was using 17-pound fluorocarbon line. I was using ordinary 14-pound mono. Fluorocarbon, unlike ordinary mono, sinks. He was getting better depth on his retrieve than I was.
"I feel like 17-pound fluorocarbon and a 3/0 Gamakatsu extra wide-gap hook gives that bait just the right speed of fall," he said. "I don't like to add any additional weight. It takes away from the action."
The baits (coming to a tackle store near you soon) have a lot of built-in wiggle because of the unusually soft plastic, which, Stricker said, also causes the fish to hang on to the bait a little longer.
That, however, was hardly an issue: Most of our fish came from the edge of the weeds where the flat dropped off and you could see them dart out and inhale it. Good Polaroid glasses help here -- if you see a fish chase but refuse to commit, you can slow it down, twitch it or whatever, to trip its switch.
The best part of the day, however, was what we saw out of the lake. Our best five fish would have scared the heck out of 20 pounds, which is the way things used to be on St. Clair, but haven't been in the last few years.
Make no mistake: Lake St. Clair is back.