Rocket Bass

Most of my readers (that number being 3) have figured out that I spend most of my time chasing smallmouth bass. Well, if you live in SE Michigan and do not feel like driving 3.5 hours for trout, that is what you do. We here in MI catch a lot of rock bass while pursuing smallmouths, and most anglers view them as one step up from a speeding ticket. They inhale flies so you have to stop fishing and pull out the hemostats, they give a might tug like a trophy smallmouth then roll over and play dead, and they are of a size that you can't grab them by the lower jaw. This results in at least one really good fin-prick every trip. They are despised and "don't count" for many anglers.

Everyone is wrong. Rock bass are cool. They give novice partners great practice at fishing cover (where you always find them), they cooperate during fly fishing clinics when the bass are thumbing their noses at you, and they create positive memories of otherwise sparse days. They tend to lie doggo in very specific spots, so when you get on to them it is a great chance to tell you buddies that you had a 50 fish day. I once caught over 30 from a single backwater the size of a pool table, and stopped only when it got so repetitive that I had to move on, having punished the species enough for one day.

The rock bass also provided me with one of my coolest experiences ever. I was casting a small popper, and hooked a good-sized one that would have been an absolute keeper for any panfish angler. When I got it within 10 feet of the rod tip, the line just sort of stopped and thought that it had darted under a log or something. Instead, the "snag" started circling and I spotted the largest smallmouth I have ever seen, ever. It had inhaled the rock bass completely (did I mention that this was a good sized rock bass) and we were at a standoff. The bass would not let go, but I could not hook the bass because the popper was, of course, deep within the jaws of Mr. rocket bass and the hook wasn't exposed. This went on for quite some time. Every once in a while the bass would lose the rock bass only to grab it again. The smallmouth finally got bored with this and sort of lumbered off to the trench. This occurred on a river where an 18 inch smallmouth gives you bragging rights for weeks, and 20 inchers are an urban legend. This fish was 25 inches at least, and probably weighed over 6 pounds. Only a bass that size could inhale a 6 inch rock bass repeatedly and make it look easy each time I saw it happen. I did release the rock bass, but it was not a happy rock bass and probably spent the rest of the summer growing new scales.

The rock bass in the photo above was caught last week, and until I got it to hand I thought it was a decent smallmouth. About 12 inches, and twice the size of the usual "nice rock bass" you hold up for your fishing partner to admire. Of course, no tape measure so a chance at a Michigan master angler rock bass certificate was lost. It made me cry inside. Note to self, add tape measure to gear list, and also pick up one of those cutesy Simms fish counter things that you always thought were stupid until you realized that no will believe the abundance of this species until you have some real numbers.

Lake Huron Bassin'

I always thought that the Great Lakes were the last frontier of midwest fly fishing. This was true until a couple of years ago when everybody discovered it. The flats fishing around Grand Traverse Bay in Lake Michigan is now famous, although people seem more enamored of common carp than they are of smallmouth bass. But there is great fishing for bass in many areas of the upper lakes. We took a chance and headed to Lake Huron last Sunday, and it was insane. There is a great deal of habitat, and essentially you find a spot that has rocks, wade out, and cast. May and June are best, but one of the best days I ever had was in mid-August. One very fascinating spot is Michigan's thumb, from Port Austin down past Lexington. The coastline has sandy beaches, but there are many spots with big boulder fields. There is one well known MDNR access, but if you look around you can find all kinds of access up and down the coast. And if you can't find public access, try knocking on doors to get permission to cross the beach. It works.

It is just like fishing the flats in Florida or the bahamas, except there are no stingrays to puncture your feet, no sharks or stinging jellies, and if you get dehydrated you can bend over and take a drink.In some cases you can wade a mile offshore before it gets too deep to cast effectively. But knee deep is all you need.

So we showed up at a well known spot, and waded out. A fly fishing club had beaten us, and their anglers were all in a giant circle whipping a boulder field to a froth. There are three ways of fishing here: you can cast to rocks, you can cast to fish, or you can blind cast to channels and the edges of rocky bars. The rock casting approach works well, but it has the inherent problem that in nearly every case you are fishing an active spawning bed. In the Great Lakes, this is bad because studies by Jeff Steinhart of Lake Superior State University have shown that even when the bass is released, by the time it gets back to the nest the invasive round gobies have swarmed in and eaten most of the eggs or fry. So it is best to look for cruisers, or fish the edges. I have cast to fish on beds, and will fish that way if nothing else works or I have a novice partner who really needs to catch a bass. But the cruisers are actually more fun and good practice for bonefish and redfish because you are casting to a moving target. Harder than it looks.

I quickly became king of the lost fish and missed four in a row. Blind casting did nothing, and it dawned on me that every fish I had hooked was seen first, either meandering along the bars or chasing minnows up on top of them. So we formed a line and worked shallow to deep. A pod of fish swam right between us and we each got a couple before they wised up and vamoosed toward the stygian depths. This went on for a while with pods coming and going, but then it sort of died. We decided to try a different spot a couple of miles down the road.

The new place was different: smallmouths everywhere: tailing in pairs as they spawned, milling around by each rock, singles cruising in water barely deep enough to cover their dorsals. We loafed down the shoreline and came to an ancient rock spit formed by some fool who thought that stretch of the coast would make a darn good harbor. Next to it there is a deep bowl shaped depression filled with massive boulders that I call Stonehenge. Normally Stonehenge is submerged and armpit deep, but with the low water this year it barely reached your waist. There was a pod of bass sitting in the middle of the thing that had at least 100 fish. They were obviously feeding. It was one of those things that you know you are going to pay for because on some level it is morally wrong to catch that many fish. Every cast resulted in a phalanx of bass following the crayfish imitation, and one would dart forward and inhale it. I had debarbed my fly, and if one threw it on a jump another would grab it when it fell back in. The best part was when I decided to see if they would hit a streamer. Tied on a bucktail emerald shiner pattern, debarbed it, and tossed it out into the center of the bowl. I looked down and saw my hemostat sitting on top of the chest pack, so I put the rod under my arm as I stuffed it into a compartment. Looked up, and the fly was floating motionless on the surface. A fish leaped out of the water to inhale it, and that question was answered. They actually seemed to like the streamer better, if that were possible. This went on and on and on until they finally all got bored with us and left for hot sex in the shallows. I lost count of the number of fish we caught, but realized that you can't have a 50 fish day up there because it takes a long time to land 16 inch fish, and after a while your arm gets tired.

We got a couple more out deeper, but the wind got higher and there were no more big pods to be seen. We even waded out to the edge of the deep blue, but the only thing we saw were Ohio-class common carp and they were having nothing to do with the likes of us.

The epilogue is as strange as can be. I tipped a good friend who lives to fish that area. He got there 24 hours later. The winds had shifted 180 degrees to the north, and the flat was barren as my checking account the day before payday. Not a fish in site, empty beds, and I think he got one fish the entire day. I will be up there again in a few weeks. Spawning will be long over, but there will still be fish out a bit deeper, and the carp will be cruising around in huge pods. Not to mention freshwater drum and the occasional channel cat. Flats fishing at its finest, and way cheaper than a ticket to the Bahamas to fish for bunch of snooty bonefish that remind me of a marine version of the white sucker. Michigan rocks.