Locating Great Lakes Summer Smallmouth

[JollyJoe]

Hi,

 

Looking to get some of your guy's insight on locating Great Lake summer Smallies. Imagine you are going to a new area of one of the GL's where are you starting your search for the first time. I am going to be doing some big water fishing for the first time as a boater in the coming weeks and looking to brush up. I'm well prepared on the safety front and will have experienced GL's boaters riding with me :).

 

If I were to head out today i would be looking mainly around Main Lake Structure. High Spots and Humps on large reefs with sharp breaks. Somewhere they can slide up and down vertically with ease to feed.

 

The main question I have is how do you go about breaking down such a vast structure? What factor does the wind play in positioning fish on these structures etc. 

 

Tight lines,

Joe

[J Francho]

This is my experience on Ontario.  Start looking at a contour map for the area you want to fish.  Ignore everything shallower than 25', and imagine that is your shoreline.  Section it off into football field size areas.  Get the way points for the boundaries, and enter them into your GPS.  Then start scanning on the water.  You're looking for bait fish carpeting the bottom.  Weeds would be another key feature.  If you find carpets of bait, start fishing, and stay on them.  The smallies will be there.  The bait being present is the one thing I know will hold groups of smallies.  Otherwise it's a needle in a haystack deal, with the fish being well fed and scattered.

[JollyJoe]

1 minute ago, J Francho said:

This is my experience on Ontario.  Start looking at a contour map for the area you want to fish.  Ignore everything shallower than 25', and imagine that is your shoreline.  Section it off into football field size areas.  Get the way points for the boundaries, and enter them into your GPS.  Then start scanning on the water.  You're looking for bait fish carpeting the bottom.  Weeds would be another key feature.  If you find carpets of bait, start fishing, and stay on them.  The smallies will be there.  The bait being present is the one thing I know will hold groups of smallies.  Otherwise it's a needle in a haystack deal, with the fish being well fed and scattered.

J - Appreciate the insight. The area I'm looking at has many large reefs with high spots topping in 15-20 feet with deep water surrounding. Are these structures too shallow for this time of year in your opinion? I imagine some fish would use them, but in your experience is the quantity and quality relating to similar features just deeper? 

 

P.S. I'm looking at Erie. The shallowest of the GL if that alters what you said above

[tkunk]

I live on Lake Michigan. Wind makes it much easier, because you only have to fish the windy side of each piece of structure. Don't be afraid to check shallow areas. It's not a super high percentage thing, but if the fish are there, you can absolutely murder them, so it's always worth checking.

 

If they're not shallow, you'll need to fish deeper areas. If I'm not familiar with a location, I'll cruise around the steepest breaks and waypoint any kind of boulder or rock/sand transition. You'll want to drop shot each one of these. If, at any time during this search, you see bait or smallies on your graph, start fishing immediately!

 

I don't bother fishing if it's calm.

[MickD]

St Clair is one of the best smallmouth lakes in the country, and it has very little deep water structure, and deep is where they are for the most part right now.  Especially the big ones.    I'm struggling with finding them, but my expert friends tell me that deep weeds are a place to start.  Find the weeds and fish the edge and quite far out from the edge-they don't always hang out at the weeds or immediate edge.  

 

Also, they move, so a good spot a day ago may have nothing today.

 

Dragging tubes in the shipping channel works at times.

 

 

Good luck.

[J Francho]

16 hours ago, JollyJoe said:

P.S. I'm looking at Erie. The shallowest of the GL if that alters what you said above

Erie is a bit different, but basically the same.  There are way more interesting "super structure" on Erie.  You could spend a lifetime dissecting areas.  Are you going out Cleveland?  There's a ton of good fishing right now, as soon as you leave the harbor.

[JollyJoe]

3 minutes ago, J Francho said:

Erie is a bit different, but basically the same.  There are way more interesting "super structure" on Erie.  You could spend a lifetime dissecting areas.  Are you going out Cleveland?  There's a ton of good fishing right now, as soon as you leave the harbor.

Going to be headed out of Sandusky Harbor

[J Francho]

You probably don't need to venture too far from the harbor.  Never fished that end.

[Dwight Hottle]

Joe the reef tops you mentioned might be worth a try both early & late in the day. Other wise look for fish in deeper water adjacent to the reefs.