Michigan’s catch-and-release fishing season runs year-round, but Michigan anglers Steve Schwartz and Tom Remington know that the right time to try for heavyweight pre-spawn smallmouths is the first weekend in May in the state’s Upper Peninsula.
“We’ve been fishing the same inland lake for 14 years,” Schwartz told Wired2Fish. “The lake is big and windy, cold and deep, and not too far from Lake Michigan. But I’m not gonna reveal its name, because it’s too consistently good to share that info.
“We always catch a couple hundred smallmouths in a few days fishing – all released, of course. Usually, we get 30 or more big bass in just a morning. There are lots of 3- and 4-pounders, a few 5-pounders, even some 6-pounders. But the fish my buddy Tom Remington hooked the afternoon of May 3 was in a whole different bass class.”
The Bait
It was a cold, calm, bluebird day, with chilly 46-degree water when they launched Schwartz’s Tracker Marine Pro Team 190 bass boat. Through the morning and early afternoon they worked rock piles in four feet of clear water. They’d already caught a couple dozen smallmouths, with some 4- and 5-pounders boated and released.
Schwartz says lure choice is simple on the lake because three different artificials are most productive: a soft plastic tube lure, a jerk bait, and a shallow-running crankbait.
“We were working rocks, bouncing crankbaits off them, and catching bass regularly,” said Schwartz, age 57, a semi-retired angler from Grandville, Michigan. “We both were using KVD square bill crankbaits in crayfish color.”
The Fight
About mid-afternoon, Tom made a cast with his spinning rod and reel spooled with 6-pound-test fluorocarbon line. He bounced his diving plug off a rock or two, and a fish slammed it.
“I saw a huge boil from that fish and immediately went for the landing net,” Schwartz said. “The strike wasn’t that hard, but it jumped. Tom got it quickly to the net and we saw how huge it was. Its belly was so massive it was unreal. I’m sure she was full of ripe roe, and she may have been eating well, too.”
Schwartz scooped the bass in their net, and they couldn’t believe their eyes; he said they were shaking with excitement.
Weights and Measures
They took a couple quick photos of the bass, then weighed it twice on an accurate hand-held scale. It clocked in at 8-pounds, 1-ounce, and it measured 21 inches, but they didn’t have a tape for a girth measurement.
The fish was so enormous around its distended pot belly it seemed almost deformed, like it had eaten a softball. In one photo of the smallmouth made on their boat deck, it appears like a ripe egg or two came out of the bass’ vent.
“She was right there, ready to spawn, so we put her back in the lake right away,” Schwartz said. “We’d never seen a bass like that one. Tom’s biggest smallmouth prior to that fish was a 6 pounder. I don’t know if he’ll ever catch another one bigger.
“But we know where she lives, and you can bet we’ll be back again next May trying to catch her again.”
The current Michigan state record for smallmouth bass is 9.98 pounds, set on September 11, 2016, by Robert Bruce Kraemer.
