MACOMB COUNTY, Mich. — Jason Christie has won two B.A.S.S. tournaments at Lake St. Clair, including the 2017 Elite Series tournaments here. However, those waypoints where he’d previously caught bass had been inexplicably erased from his mapping electronics when he arrived here this week. No problem.
“If I was going to lose my waypoints on a lake, this is the lake I’d want to do it on,” Christie said.
Chris Johnston noted something similar in a pre-tournament story, telling Shaye Baker, “A lot of times you can almost delete your waypoints every year (at St. Clair) and start over.”
That’s what it’s like at this 430-square-mile shallow bowl of a lake that has no significant contour changes. Its average depth is 11 feet. Brandon Palaniuk has dubbed it “Smallmouth Okeechobee,” in reference to Florida’s round relatively shallow lake noted for largemouth bass. Smallmouth bass like to roam in any lake, and here they seemingly just move to where the food is. On Day 1 at the AFTCO Bassmaster Elite at Lake St. Clair, the smallmouth bass were primarily feeding on crawfish and yellow perch.
“I wouldn’t have thought crawfish, but my livewells are covered with them,” said Christie, who finished the day in second place with a 5-bass limit weighing 23 pounds, 14 ounces.
Shane LeHew topped that by five ounces. He’s leading the tournament with 24-3. Like Christie, LeHew noted, “I’ve got a lot of crawdads in my livewells right now.”
Crawfish, yellow perch, gobies – there’s plenty of food in Lake St. Clair, and apparently the smallmouth bass are feeding up fast. After three days of practice before the tournament, angler after angler noted how skinny the bass were. But a bunch of fat ones hit the scales Thursday.
“There are two different classes of fish right now,” Christie said. “You either catch one that’s skinny or you catch one that’s fat. I got five fat ones today.”
Most tournaments on smallmouth bass lakes tend to have tightly bunched standings. After Day 1, the standings are maybe tighter than usual. Only two pounds separates LeHew from 10th place Ed Loughran III (22-3), and only four pounds separates first place from 33rd place Austin Felix (20-3).
However, there were lots of stories about days that finished in success, but were struggles along the way.
“It’s nothing like it showed up on paper, I’m telling you,” Christie said. “I caught a 5-pounder with not a lot of time left. But I caught them way better than I thought I was going to. I didn’t catch a 20-pound bag all of practice. However, it was way tougher than what 23 pounds, 14 ounces sounds like.”
LeHew had an easier day. He said he had his weight by about 12:30, even though the morning started slow for him. “I got on one little line, and I caught all those big ones on that drift.”
He noted that the drift he made was through shorter aquatic vegetation just off the bottom that was bordered on either side by taller vegetation.
“This place is like a giant bowl,” LeHew said. “It’s kind of like a big pond. It just tapers forever. There are no real contours or things like that.”
LeHew, like just about everyone else in this tournament, is staring at his forward-facing sonar and casting a dropshot bait when he sees a target. He threw three different Berkley Maxscent dropshot baits, but thought everything he weighed-in came on the Flatnose Minnow.
Bryan Schmitt is in third place, one pound out of the lead, with 23-3.
“Fish are spitting up crawfish, gobies, perch – the whole thing is going on,” he said. “There’s mayflies. I’m just meandering around, throwing at the ones I see on the (Live)Scope.”
Schmitt took big bass honors on Day 1 with a 6-pound, 1-ounce smallmouth. He said all his fish came on a dropshot with a Missile Baits Mini Magic Worm, wacky rigged.
But nothing is guaranteed from one day to the next on Smallmouth Okeechobee.
“One area in my main area where I thought I was really going to do good, it was void of life today,” Schmitt said. “They move.”
Brandon Card is in a 6th-place tie with Brandon Lester at 22-9. In a tournament where all 102 anglers weighed a five-bass limit, Card summed up his feelings about Lake St. Clair, saying, “I hated this place before forward-facing sonar. You were just out there drifting around. It’s pretty fun now.”
