St. Marys River Practice
Taking it back a bit here as I’ve been saving this blog for the new site. This is about the 2020 West Michigan Bass classic and is a part 1 of 2.
I’ve been looking forward to something new all season and we were finally going to get it. It was refreshing to see some new water and a smallmouth tournament. Something that has been greatly lacking in the tournaments I’ve been fishing this year. Shaun ended up not being able to go last minute so I was rolling solo on a fishery I know nothing about.
I got up there on Wednesday afternoon and was able to get out and try and get a feel for things. I didn’t get a sense for much other than everything looked good and I couldn’t get any bites. I just spent my time in a small section of the river so maybe I was just in the wrong area. We were staying along the river in Barbeau which luckily was right by the Cozy Corners restaurant/bar (great place) and the West Michigan Bass crew. So regardless of the fishing it was going to be fun
I had some higher hopes for day 2 but I was going to start off by trying to catch a pink salmon. Pinks run heavy every other year in the soo and this was a pink year. I discovered this was the very end of the run but I really wanted to try and catch one. So the iconic power plant was going to be my first stop. I marked a huge school of fish on the HUMMINBRID out from it and decided to stop there and see if anyone up by the wall was catching them. The bad news was I couldn’t make mine bite and no one on the wall was catching them. I finally worked my way up to the wall and everyone said only one had been caught all morning. It was time to bail on that and go bass fishing!
I worked my way downriver through miles and miles of dead water in Lake Nicolet. The amount of amazing structure is incredible but marking fish and catching them was few and far between. It was a major relief just to catch a bass and I finally had a little something figured out with a crankbait. It started to blow pretty good out of the south and get fairly rough so it kept me from continually going downriver (which was a big mistake). I eventually headed back to the powerplant and caught a pink in short order. The bonus was it was a nice “humpy” male so at least that mission was accomplished. Eventually I got sick of the rain and headed back to the cabin. From there we hit up the Cozy Corners all you can eat wing night. The wings were huge so if you got more than 2 baskets you must have been really hungry. I highly recommend it if you happen to be around there on a Thursday.