SAL321

It's out home lake, we fish it all year. If your coming up mid-summer and plan to launch out of Canada I would use Mitchells Bay and I believe there is a public launch at Belle River. Both of those areas have produce a ton of fun SMB in the 3-4 range and fives are common if you're on them Once we are post-spawn, 80% of our time is in Canadian waters. Less traffic, better fishing. Use the border as your guide. They are moving all the time but generally 15-19 FOW using drop shot , cranks and ned rig.

I gotta away from deep cranking for smallmouth in the summer and like the newer techniques as well but nothing like a crank bite for big smallies on St Clair. Will really stick with it post spawn. My kid is usually upfront and out fishes the hell out of me by numbers and size. I'm usually getting his scraps.

You would be surprised what they might do. It's worth a quick message to them, you'll have to put some effort into and send it to them but I had a situation which 100% was my fault and they replaced it. Took about 2 weeks or so. Loyal customer now, so worth it to them with so many options.

We fish St. Clair and if the bite is tough a tube cures a bad day fast. As mentioned it's taken a back seat to some different techniques but is crazy effective.

Try a Spearpoint #3 Drop / Shot finesse hook of the small Gamakatsu drop shot hook, its a #2. They are perfect for the smaller minnow style baits and pin the fish perfectly.

Just 27 series for the trolling motor. The ghost never seems to run them down regardless of condition. The 31 Series running the electronics. Confident but not entirely trusting it with live well and pumps running. Expect more out of the starting electronics battery

Ok, taking the lithium plunge as I have to replace my lead acid batteries. I have the Lowrance Ghost , 3 graphs , AT and generally don't run live wells and pumps all day. Typical fishing day is 6-8 hours on the weekend. I'm torn between 2 - 36V-50/60Ah for the trolling motor or 3- 12V 50Ah ? I will also have the 125+ ah starting battery. I've gone back and forth but would like real world input. If you went one way and could have a do over would ya change anything?

There is a 13 Fishing rod on sale at TW. They are solid. But as mentioned there are a ton of rods under that price point. My favorite drop shot rod is the Dobyns Fury 7'2. It's got great sensitivity and performs just as good as rod that I have 2X that. It's over $100 but worth IMO>

I had dipped my toes in on the IMA flit 120 the I first started jerk baiting. Great bait. Stunna is solid, Really like the Loca Special by 13 Fishing.

Don't feel bad. We got hammered from that mess and I can assure everyone I never got a notification about this.

Yep I saw this on a deck from a really good stick on Lake St Clair. I asked him about it and he said try a single hook hanging off the back and your hook up ratio will go up big time. He told me any straight shank light wire hook will work.

Jumping on the underpin bandwagon and investing in some more spy baits. I've had some serious smallmouth on the spy bait pop off. I'm going with a single hook as a hack I saw to see if I can get one of these hogs in the boat.

Kudos to TW. They have greatly improved their shipping times. I placed an order late Tuesday and will have it in three business days. I live in Michigan. I was a little critical of them in an earlier post but they showed up! This warehouse in GA seems to be humming along.

TW has a great selection don't get me wrong. Its seems they are 5-10% higher on items that I would want. Am I going to take advantage of their sale...yes on the items that make sense. Most were mentioned above. I almost used them exclusively and now they are second or third choice based on price and speed of shipment alone. It can be stated differently maybe. Maybe is they have grown comfortable with a loyal buyer base and don't feel they have to "earn" your business where most of the companies listed early go out of their way to ACTUALLY ship same day and have improved their sites and stock.

Thanks for posting there are a few things I was looking at . TW better wake up, their pricing is generally higher and a 20% sale is better than nothing. They've got some competition they better pay attention to.

Great topic and I'm going through the same process. We fish St Clair 95% of the time and like you we don't tournament fish but do fish every Saturday and Sunday (weather dependent) . We cruise around but spot hop and don't hit the rivers very often I originally was going to go 3 50ah 12v for my Ghost but then got some feedback on 2 36V 60ah. I think it might be too much power but its a big investment. Measure twice, cut once if you will. I'm still torn and looking for real world examples.

No kidding. I got a deep cranking itch for smallmouth and wanted to overhaul my jerk baits and the primate has me by the short hairs. The last two years it's been an obsession. I finally told myself this year enough was enough. So many times the carts were locked and loaded. So far so good.....

Take a look a Ridgeback gobies by Anglers Choice. They are a Canadian company near Lake St Clair. We have just about every color. They are legit.

It is painful at times but that little sucker consistently puts bigs in our boat. In the last two years I've seen both my boys get their PB SMB on the ned a 6.8 pig this spring and a 6.6 last year. I haven't crossed the 6 bridge yet but managed to come up three oz short last year. All on the ned. I've gone to the extreme and heavily invested in deep cranking. My better half thinks (knows) intervention is potentially required to address it.

At TW ? Want to jump on this but don't see them ?

FWIW , Duckett Fishing has buy 1, get two free on their Paradigm bait casters and spinning reels. Popped up on my IG feed and I jumped on it. I got two of the CRW bait casters and the SWx spinning reel for $200 + shipping. Total order was $213. MSRP used to be $199. Blowing them out before Icast I suppose.

I agree I had a similar experience late in the year with a 6XD and it appeared to get down deeper then the Invisix and was heavier. I do worry about wind knots but depth won't be an issue. Once the weed line develops it will be perfect to ride and tick off the tops of those weeds which will be perfect. It doesn't work like I expect I'll respell with the Invisix and move it over to my finesse set-up.

We generally have tied 12 lb Invisix and really have no reason to switch but I rigged a new rod for deep cranking with 20lb braid, no leader. Wanted to try something different with this rod. We'll see how it goes.

Hmmm thanks for sharing, entered but didn't see that message.

Thats great to hear. I have option #2 coming from Midway and their GC sale. I have no doubt it will be packed right and be A-OK.