Big water smallmouths
Fort Smith angler enjoys epic trip on Lake Michigan
“Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams. The islands and bays are for sportsmen!”
A definitive line from Gordon Lightfoot’s, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” validated itself recently for Rowe Waelder of Fort Smith. Waelder, an avid hunter and angler, had long wanted to visit Door County, Wis., but as for many of us, destinations in that category never make it onto the itinerary because they are so remote. However, summer’s torrid heat wave moved it up the list with a bullet.
“It got so hot this summer,” Waelder said. “I told my wife, ‘Here’s the deal. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s got to be someplace cooler than this. You pick it out.’” Door County, also a favorite retreat for Jim Parins, the esteemed late literature professor at UA-Little Rock, got the nod. Sister Bay was their base.
“We were going to be there for five days,” Waelder said. “Since we’re here, I want to try to catch a big smallmouth bass.”
Lakes Michigan and Erie are famous for their giant smallmouth bass. Lake Erie frequently hosts Bassmaster Elite tournaments and Major League Fishing tournaments. Lake Michigan hosted the 2000 Bassmaster Classic, with weigh-ins held at Chicago’s Soldier Field.
Waelder is an experienced smallmouth angler, but he said that a Great Lakes smallmouth and a southern smallmouth are similar in appearance only.
“I’ve caught smallmouth bass in the Bull [Shoals], at Beaver and Broken Bow, but it seems like those northern smallmouths are built differently,” Waelder said. “They’re thick and big-bodied. They pull hard, and when they see the boat or net, you’ve got another four or five minutes before you get them in. You’re using 6-pound line and a spinning rod, so it’s not like you’re going to well-rope them them in.”
For this adventure, Waelder enlisted the services of Capt. Paul Delaney, owner of Late Eyes Sport Fishing and Guide Service of Bailey’s Harbor, Wis. Sturgeon Bay was the arena. In seven hours it surrendered 25 smallmouth bass weighing between 3-5 pounds.
“We could see where we parked from a mile or so away,” Waelder said. “Everything was on long points, humps, and underwater islands in 18-25 feet of water. We got on one hole where I’m pretty sure we caught 15 or 16 of those 25 on that one spot. We had several doubles at that time.”
“Those were nice fish,” Delaney said. “It really opens our eyes when we see them at seven pounds!”
Their tackle was similar to what we use to catch lake smallmouths in the South. Delaney said they used 7-foot, medium-action St. Croix Avid rods and Shimano Vanguard 2500 reels. Their line was Sufix 832 braid with a 5-foot leader. The leader material was 100% flourocarbon Sufix Advance.
“You need that leader because our fish can become very spooky,” Delaney said.
They caught their fish with drop shots. They used Z-Man Trick Shotz soft plastics in Green pumpkin/goby.
“They hit it on the bottom,” Waelder said. “A lot of times you wouldn’t move it but once or twice, and they’d be on. Not every strike was bone jarring. Some of them kind of had that mush mouth feel, but the ones that were bone jarring were pretty intense.”
Waelder said the wind blew 20-25 mph, with 30 mph gusts. That created huge waves and made conditions very challenging for a passenger. He said he had to take motion sickness medication and that he fought seasickness for about the first four hours.
Steve Bowman, the outdoor editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from 19882000, was a press observer for the late Joe Yates of Van Buren during the 1990 Red Man All-American on Lake Erie. Bowman said that the waves tore the trolling motor and windshields off Yates’ Ranger bass boat, and that he passed blood for several days from the pounding on his kidneys.
Delaney, on the other hand, said that wind is essential for fishing. Those conditions were ideal for the mission.
“The biggest thing I’m always looking at every day is my wind,” Delaney said. “Our water is very clear, so we fight visibility issues quite a bit. Having some kind of wind helps breaks up our visibility. That’s also going to determine where we’re going find warmer water.”
Lake Michigan’s bays are vast. Waelder said Sturgeon Bay looked oceanic. There are no visual reference markers to find structure. Delaney and other guides rely on waypoints, and their accuracy must be precise.
“It just looks all the same,” Waelder said. “I saw some 40- and 50-foot water, but you have to have that waypoint on a specific location. Hopefully you see bait. In a perfect world, you’ll see bait and fish. It’s water as far as you can see. When the wind kicked up, there were 3- and 4-foot rollers. The biggest challenge for me was trying to maintain my balance while I was fishing.
“It’s just so different from anything we have around here, just the vast amount of water,” he added, invoking the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. “It kind of reminds me of the first time we went to Alaska on a cruise. It just seems like it goes on forever.”
As great as the fishing was, the pounding of the waves and the seasickness were hard for Waelder to reconcile. When the day ended, he said he thought it would probably be a one-off experience. After some reflection, his attitude has softened.
“I’ve got to walk myself off the ledge a little bit,” Waelder said, laughing, “but to catch smallmouth bass like those, I might be willing to go through a little anguish.”