With our next Bassmaster Elite Series event coming up shortly, I’m definitely looking forward to Lake St. Clair. It’s fun to go to an event where I can target a species that I don’t get to fish for at home a lot — like smallmouth.
It’s also fun to go up north where the summer weather is wonderful, but it’s especially fun to visit such a place when you have momentum going your way. With two consecutive Top 12 finishes in the last two events, it kind of makes you feel like The Little Engine That Could.
I feel like I can go to St. Clair, find some fish and put together some solid patterns. At this point, I have no idea what those patterns will be so I’m trying to go with as open a mind as I can and just believe that through hard work and dedication it will come together.
I’ve always believed that preparation is more important than game day. That’s particularly relevant going into the final events of the season. Those three days of preparation leading up to a tournament are going to determine if a guy does well or does poorly at the event.
My goal is to go out and practice without looking too far forward to the event itself. I’ll just focus on my practice days and when the time comes, I analyze the results of my practice days and try to formulate a strategy.
That means more than just picking the right baits to tie on for the tournament. It also has a lot to do with picking the right areas based on the weather we’re going to have each day of the practice to make sure I can find those fish. You can practice in a good area with a lot of fish under bad weather conditions and never find those fish.
If the week gives us beautiful weather, that part of the strategy goes away. But the way this summer has behaved, we’ve had some rough weather days in practice. That’s why it’s important to plan out your days of practice.
This planning will also include how much time I devote to Lake St. Clair vs. Lake Erie. Since we can fish in either, it’s going to be important to determine where your best opportunity exists and you do that, of course, in practice.
Lake Erie is a much deeper lake and while St. Clair’s shipping channel runs pretty deep, throughout most of the lake, 20 feet is about the maximum. That means you can fish as shallow as you want to and catch fish there.
Another important distinction is that St. Clair’s significantly smaller size means less rough water. Even on a windy day, the waves won’t be nearly as bad as they might be on Erie.
I know from experience that the winning fish could possibly come from either lake, but my overall preference will be St. Clair. I’ll practice there first and if I find the fish I need, I won’t even invest a day on Erie. But if I don’t find what I’m looking for on St. Clair, I will put in a day on Erie and then make a decision from there.
However it turns out, I can say that I am genuinely happy to be returning to Lake St. Clair.