Casting for bass might bring in a bigger fish

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October 6, 2005 BY ERIC SHARP FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER

In two days, bass guide Gerry Gostenik had landed four muskellunge and been cut off by eight more while casting for smallmouths on Lake St. Clair. So when he felt another heavy weight on his Rat-L-Trap lure, he resigned himself to making another $5 sacrifice to the toothy fish gods.

This time, it wasn't a muskie, but it wasn't a smallmouth, either. It was a 12 1/2 -pound steelhead, which Gostenik released after weighing and photographing it.

"I can't believe all the muskies we're getting," said Gostenik, who has been fishing in three to six feet of water on the south side of the lake. "If we wanted to rig up with wire (leaders), this would be a great time to go casting for them."

Jon Vincent, who owns the Flymart store in Royal Oak, said fly anglers on outings with his guides have been scoring on muskies using six-inch versions of Lefty's Deceiver flies, normally used for saltwater species like tarpon and snook.

"We've been hooking fish every trip and getting a lot more follows," Vincent said. "I like to think that we have them dialed in, but it's also just a great year. We'll keep guiding for muskies on Lake St. Clair as long as the weather lets us, probably through the end of October. Then we'll switch gears and fish just north of the Port Huron area for the salmon, lake trout, steelhead and browns that come in shallow there."

Fishing for most species usually slows down in the summer doldrums and then heats up as the water cools in the fall. October often offers the best fishing of the season for muskies on Lake St. Clair, along with spectacular numbers of smallmouth bass and perch.

The limiting factor is usually the fall winds.

"The later in the season you can get out to fish, the better it usually gets," Gostenik said. "Three years ago, we had one of the best days of bass fishing ever on Lake Erie two days after Thanksgiving. It was a real mild winter, and we weren't even wearing coats. But if you get a day when it's blowing 20 knots from the east and 40 degrees, you don't want to be out there."

Steve Jones is one of Lake St. Clair's most experienced guides, running a boat called Predator on trips for muskies, bass and perch. In the past couple of weeks, "the perch fishermen have been getting bit off like crazy," he said. "Sometimes it's pike, sometimes it's muskellunge. A few of them have even landed muskies on perch rigs."

On Jones' most recent trip, his clients caught and released eight muskies, the biggest members of the pike family.

"While none of them were really big, we had several that went 43-44 inches, nice average fish for Lake St. Clair," Jones said. "I know they're getting muskies in shallow water. I think that's because the winds have dirtied the water up, and the fish are in there feeding on smaller stuff than they usually would. That's why they're getting so many on bass lures."

Perch fishing on Lake St. Clair also has been good to excellent, he said.

"People are going out to 14-18 feet of water and catching 150, and maybe half of them are in the 7 1/2 – to 13-inch range," Jones said. "They're also catching a lot of bass on minnows, along with the perch. They're getting perch off the mile roads in 12-14 feet of water. The sizes are the same, but they're not getting quite as many."