Lake St. Clair was deep in a cold post-front pattern when FishCraft filmed his early-May report, but the prespawn footballs were still happy to eat — and once the lake's smallmouth bite went soft, the Detroit River was open for business. The video, dropped six days ago, is the kind of multi-day fishery snapshot that does well in May on Anglerfishing.
The big picture, in the words of the host opening the video: "It's early May. It's a wonderful time for both smallmouth and walleye, as you'll see in this video. 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."
Weather rolled the trip around. Daytime highs barely cleared 50 degrees on Friday and Saturday, with a north-east chop chasing the boat over the rock piles before a forecast south-westerly of 15 to 25 knots came in on Sunday. The angler took it as the cue to pivot.
The smallmouth pattern was a Lake St. Clair classic: drift across rock piles in three-to-five feet, drag a tube on a half-ounce head with the wind, drop a drop-shot worm on the fish that bit too lightly to swing on. Most of the fish were two-to-three-pound footballs, but a 4.88-pound prespawn smallmouth came over the gunnel early in the trip, and a 4.72-pounder showed exactly what these fish are eating.
"This fish isn't even that long," the host says of the 4.72 belly-loaded bass. "Absolute football. This is what a football is."
Most fish coughed up crawfish at the net — a fact that made it obvious why the colour palette of the rotation skewed brown and orange. "These fish are starting to fire up now," he says after stringing together back-to-back chunky three-pounders during a brief activity window. "Another nice cookie-cutter bass. Number 17 fish of the day. Not bad."
When the post-front took the lake bite away, FishCraft motored into the Detroit River and switched species. The walleye session was almost embarrassingly fast.
"After a day of smallmouth fishing, it can't get any better than spending a day with FishCraft, catching smallies and then smashing some [walleye]," he laughs midway through a run of fish. The successful bait was a soft plastic he calls the siren, rigged on light jig-heads after the half-ouncer got too heavy for the slowing fish. Two hours of jigging produced eleven walleye, most of them quality 19-to-23-inch eyes, several of them suspected post-spawn females travelling skinny.
"The siren strikes again, folks," he says about three fish into the run. "This bait, it catches fish no matter where. Something about it literally catches everything."
The pace stretched into the trip's last evening as the light dropped, with the host re-rigging a chewed-up chartreuse soft plastic and going back on the fish until he ran out of light. The next morning, the south-westerly arrived as forecast at 15 to 25 knots and the day-three report opens with a first-cast prespawn smallie at three and three-quarter pounds — the biggest fish of the day so far — before the wind chased them off.
The pattern read for anyone fishing Lake St. Clair through to Memorial Day is simple. Drag tubes on rock piles for the prespawn smallmouth when the wind lets the boat drift, drop shot when the fish tap rather than eat, and if the post-front front kills the lake bite, head into the river and put a soft plastic on the walleye, who are still piling up post-spawn.
FishCraft's summary at the end of the trip puts it cleanly: "The river should be on fire until probably Memorial Day. So get out there while you can — and the smallies will be going too."