Brittney Wilton was working on building her new home in Harrison Township, Michigan, on Sunday, November 2 when the itch to go fishing hit. That’s near the shores of Lake St. Clair, just 20 miles from Detroit.
“My fiancé Jeff [Grzywinski] and I are building our house, but I wanted to go fishing that beautiful sunny day,” Brittney told Wired2fish. “Jeff told me to go ahead, so I took his 21-foot Phoenix bass boat and launched it into Lake St. Clair about 10 a.m.”
The temperature was 56 degrees with a slight wind. Perfect fishing conditions just before a cold front was due to blow in the next day, said Wilton — a licensed fishing guide who also works at Rose Marine Service in nearby Algonac, Michigan.
“I knew a spot about six miles down the lake that produced some nice smallmouths last year at this time, and that’s where I headed that morning,” she said. “I ran to that spot, but someone else was fishing exactly on the place I wanted to cast.”
Brittney stayed well away from the other angler and caught a 3-pound and 4-pound smallmouth as she waited and hoped the other fisherman would leave. But he didn’t. So, she ran her boat to another spot, a basin about 10 feet deep surrounded by water slightly shallower.
The Difference Maker
“I could see some good sized fish on my graph, and I thought they were sheepshead or freshwater drum,” she explained. “But I cast around the basin anyway and caught a 2.5-pound smallmouth.”
She made another cast, and a heavy fish hit her ¼-ounce Strike King green-pumpkin and purple Coffee Tube jig.
“It never jumped, and I thought for sure it was a drum,” she remembered. “But when I got it close to my boat and knelt down to land it, I saw how big it was and yelled, ‘Holy crap, it’s a smallmouth!’.”
She quickly weighed the fish on a scale in the boat where it tallied 7 pounds, 4 ounces. She put the fish in the boat’s livewell and continued fishing the area for three hours but never caught anything else.
“I took the big fish out of the well and compared it to a 4-pounder I also had,” Wilton said. “The 4-pounder looked like a minnow compared to the 7-pounder.”
The fish was nearly two pounds heavier than Brittney’s previous big smallmouth bass weighing 5 pounds, 6 ounces.
A Catch to Remember
She released her bass, including the big fish, at a secret spot so she might be able to return to that place and catch the fish again sometime in the future.
“The 7-pounder was beautiful in great shape,” she detailed. “There were no red fins, no bite marks from a muskie – just a perfectly healthy big smallmouth when I released it.”
She now proudly declares she’s a member of the prestigious “7-pound smallmouth bass club,” a fictitious group of anglers who have caught and held the Holy Grail of lunker smallies weighing 7 pounds.
“Not even Jeff has caught a 7-pounder, and he’s a fishing guide, too,” Brittney said proudly. “Maybe one day I’ll be in the 8-pound club!”
