Lake St. Clair was in classic post-front shape when FishCraft hit it in early May, the water hovering under 50 degrees with a north-east chop on the rock piles and a 15-to-25-knot south-westerly forecast to chase them off the smallmouth grounds the following day. The film, posted six days ago, paints a vivid picture of the back-end of the May prespawn window on one of the Great Lakes' most-talked-about fisheries.
"It's a wonderful time for both smallmouth and walleye," the FishCraft host says at the top of the report. "We spent a lot of times on rock piles, dragging tubes for smallies. And then we went to the river and jigged up some walleye."
The smallmouth method was the bread-and-butter Lake St. Clair drift: dragging a tube on a heavier head and following it up with a drop-shot when the bite tapped off. Wind was light enough on the first sessions that the boat could drift over the rock piles and spot-lock when something bent the rod. Most fish were footballs in the two-to-three-pound class with several genuine pre-spawn lumps thrown in, including a 4.88-pound smallmouth landed off the deck early in the trip and a 4.72-pounder that, in true Lake St. Clair fashion, coughed up three or four crawfish before it made the net.
"This is what a football is," the angler says holding a fish that was "not even that long" but obviously gorged. "Let's get her back."
FishCraft repeated the rotation between species across three days, leaving the smallies as the cold front sat over the lake and motoring into the Detroit River to clean up on walleye when the rock-pile bite went soft.
"Taking a break from smallmouth bass fishing and got a second walleye," the host laughs after burying the first eye into the fish box. "It's a world-class fishery for both. You can get smallmouth, you can catch walleye."
The walleye session was tight and brutally efficient. Switching from a half-ounce tube jig to lighter jig-heads and a soft-plastic favourite he calls "the siren", the FishCraft crew put eleven walleye in the box inside two hours — most of them quality fish in the 20-to-23-inch class, several of them suspected post-spawn females travelling skinny and hungry. "This bait, it catches fish no matter where," he insists between fish. The biggest of the run came on a chartreuse soft-plastic re-rigged after the previous one had been chewed up.
The report doubles as a window into the prespawn smallmouth pattern that anyone fishing Lake St. Clair through Memorial Day should be planning around. Cooler than usual May water and steady south-west winds had the bigger smallmouth holding in classic three-to-five-foot rock piles and crushing tubes when the boat could drift across them, with drop-shot worms cleaning up the lighter biters when the fish were sulking after the front. Crawfish were the obvious dominant forage, with multiple regurgitations from the bigger fish.
FishCraft was direct on the timing. "The river should be on fire until probably Memorial Day," the host says. "So get out there while you can and the smallies will be going too."
With spring stretching late into May in Michigan, that window is still very much open — and on the evidence of three days off the boat, the prespawn fish on Lake St. Clair's rock piles are about as fat as they get.