St. Marys River Day 1
I didn’t have much of a clue what to expect come day one. I knew I was going to spend a lot of time in one area and hopefully figure it out. I told myself I needed to spend at least 4 hours just fishing around in there because there was definitely a population of smallmouth and bait around. The plan from there was to visit another section on the way back that another team told me to check out as they likely weren’t going to be in that area that day. After that I had 4 or 5 places other places I would hit if I had time and needed fish otherwise I would save them for day 2.
I had a boat number in the 20s so I was hopeful that I would get my preferred area. We were fortunate to get some solid morning conditions, calm and not too cold. It was going to make the run down the river enjoyable at least. There was so much space between boats and defined channels to run that it made the morning run a lot of fun. In fact it was probably the most enjoyable 15 miles I’ve ever been in a bass boat.
Upon arrival I planned on checking for them out deep and then hitting the shallow spot I had some fish on. I saw some of the bait out deep still but not exactly what I was looking for so I started in shallow. It was much easier to explore since it wasn’t windy. I could actually see some current moving but it changed the area from being random to being very specific. Unfortunately I would be a slow learner at this. Instead of focusing on the sweet spot I had a whole area where I had the bites (due to the windy/wavy practice conditions) that needed to be explored.
My first bite came out deep on a tube and unfortunately didn’t measure. The shallow stuff didn’t pan out of the first pass and I never got “that bite” to clue me in on how everything was set up. I moved around some more between deep and shallow getting bit off by a pike and catching a couple more short fish. My next pass on what I would eventually learn was the spot on the spot produced a big bite on a swimbait right away. It bit the tail off so I threw out a darter and had another fish on for a split second 3 different times on that cast. Next cast another big one came off and things certainly weren’t going my way. The next cast I put one in the boat just under 4 and watched another big one eat something off the surface. I was clued in to where I wanted my bait to be at that point but unfortunately something happened and they moved out. There was a lull for a minute and then the pike parade started. I would catch another keeper, a couple shorts, and about 15 pike. I knew I just needed to get a limit to give me a chance to score a check the next day. There was no doubt in my mind I could come down there again and get them on day 2 especially now that I knew how to fish it. I went off to the area my buddies told me about. I didn’t know exactly where it was but I started looking with the electronics and found some perch. It took about 5 minutes to spy something barely off the bottom with the HUMMINBIRDs. I wasn’t even really sure it was a fish it was locked so tight but I dropped on it and it was game on. It was a decent fish and I had about 3 hours left. I kept poking around the area but was struggling to coax anymore bites. Eventually I hooked up again on a GIANT. I could feel headshakes and it was going on some good runs, I hadn’t felt anything on the dropshot like this all week. It was obvious this was going to be over 4lbs and I knew that if I could just get even this fish I would have around 12lbs and a good day. It really knocked the wind out of my sails when it ended up being a 6+ pound drum. I hadn’t seen or heard of any all week so it wasn’t even on my radar of things to catch.
Back to needing some more bites though. I was expanding on the area when the team that told me about it showed up. So I packed up to go and idled up to them before leaving. They had some big ones but were struggling to fill out a limit. They said to stick around so I put it on plane and went back to where I picked the one for another 15 minutes. They knew right where to go and ended up putting on a show! I’m glad I had not made it to there yet and the timing was right for them to pull in. I would have felt terrible if they had showed up and I was catching them. I watched the show from a distance and headed back upriver to a few areas that had some fish in practice.
These were little high spots I could get them on moving baits. It was calm so I was throwing a swimbait and it didn’t take long on my first stop to hook up with a nice fish…well a nice pike that is. That fish proceeded to steal my swimbait to make it even worse. I went to the next spot which I had even more confidence in and suffered the exact same results. I was down to an hour left at this point and decided it was time to run some new water. While things weren’t going well it was definitely refreshing to just fish so free. With no partner there is no one to let down but yourself and I’ve got no problems letting myself down in tournaments, I’ve been doing it for years!
I would stumble onto a little something and hooked up with another fish. It took off so fast I honestly thought I had found an atlantic salmon but instead it was a 2.5 pound smallmouth. I had managed to get the net in my hands and was going for it when it just came off right there on the surface before my eyes. There were a couple more in there but unfortunately I couldn’t get them to bite and I would run out of time.
It is amazingly frustrating to have put something together only to have not executed well at all. After an extremely difficult practice I had given myself all the opportunities to have exceeded expectations only to be undone by poor execution again. My 3 fish for 7.8lbs or whatever it was certainly didn’t set me up for making a run at a check with how surprisingly good the weights were. Had I landed even that last 2.5 pounder I’d have been pretty optimistic about my chances the next day. But instead I got an early start on the trip home.
Big thanks to Dave/Kyle for a place to stay and the WMB crew for their hospitality as well. Despite my struggles on the water I really had a great time up there. Huge thanks to Amanda for holding down the fort 2 weekends in a row for 2 day classics. I’ll be looking forward to the next trip up that way!