You know they say you shouldn’t take work home with you, but for a professional fisherman, it’s hard to ever really punch out. We do have a nice long break here between our last Elite tournament on Lake Dardanelle in early June and the St. Lawrence River event in late July, but I have to admit, I’m taking what you might call a working vacation with this week’s trip up to Michigan.
I’m joining some buddies for several days of smallmouth fishing in Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie and Lake Huron, and I’d describe this trip as a combination of some much-needed fun fishing and some preparation for the Elite Series’ northern wwing.
I don’t get to fish for fun very often, so hopefully, I can spend a lot of time sitting on a butt seat in the back of a boat and experiment with some different baits. I can tell you that it’s nice to be in a cooler climate because it’s starting to get warm at the house.
That’s the two things I like about going up north — brown fish and the weather. So this is a nice break where I can get some rest before heading to ICAST and then moving into the home stretch of the Elite season.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I still want to catch the heck out of them like I do on a tournament day. But a fun fishing day is a lot more relaxed. You really don’t have a plan; you just go fishing and you never really know where you’ll end up or how long you’ll be out.
If I get tired at 3 o’clock, I’ll come in at 3 o’clock. If I’m catching them and I feel good, I might fish ’til dark. The fish are never not biting up here, so I’ll just play it by ear and hopefully enjoy catching them a bunch of different ways.
Of course, there’s a lot of personal enjoyment to that, but there’s also a really important recon element. I’ve had a flipping stick and a frog rod in my hand the entire season, and I can tell you I do not have a flipping jig or a frog in the boat right now.
I’m thinking I can probably catch them this week on a drop shot with a YUM Warning Shot, a One Knocker Spook, a tube and a YUM Breaking Shad (a soft jerkbait). It could be wide open because there are probably some postspawn fish in deep water, but there’s probably still some fish on the bank.
However I catch them, this week is going to get me back into the swing of smallmouth fishing and that’s an important thing for the remainder of the season. You know, in practice, you really don’t want to catch a whole bunch of them, so you’ll use the first tournament day to fight a bunch of fish and get yourself dialed in on the smallmouth game.
But I’ll kinda get broken in this week so I’m ready for those feisty brown fish come tournament time. A largemouth fights 10 seconds, maybe 15 seconds, but a smallmouth could be minutes, so I’ll treat this week like a refresher course.
About the only solid part of our plan is to get out of town before the July 4 crowd sets in. Aside from that, I’m going to enjoy catching a bunch of these smallmouth and maybe learn a few things that might help me during the northern swing.