If you want to experience Nirvana, Lake St. Clair fall smallmouth fishing is what you need.

Each season has its own trends and once you understand what smallmouth bass like to do in lakes and rivers, you can find em faster and catch more and bigger fish.

Lake St. Clair fall smallmouth fishing

Lake St. Clair has become a world renowned smallmouth bass fishery. As mentioned in the article, fall may be your best chance to catch a 5 lb smallmouth bass as they have all had the summer to fatten up!

Eric Sharp is a fantastic writer in the field of smallmouth bass fishing on Michigan waterways.  Here are some tips for making you time on the water more productive 🙂

“There are a couple of things I like to do at this time of year. One is to fish places like this, where there’s a slightly deeper area between two shallow flats. We’re in about 3 feet of water, but the flats on either side are about a foot-and-a-half.

“The other is to go up into the shallow bays where there are a lot of weeds and throw a rat (a weedless surface lure that looks like a mouse). It’s fun to see them blow up through the green stuff to get the bait. But you need really calm water to do that.”

Largemouth and smallmouth bass can be found throughout the lake, but fishing open water on the shallow flats with spinner baits and lipless crank baits results in a plethora of smallies…

“The spinner baits and lipless crank baits like Rat-L-Traps let you cover a lot of water quickly,” Gostenik said. “If I start getting a lot of strikes, I’ll switch to a fluke style, because it’s fun to watch fish come up after it. If the water isn’t too choppy, you can sometimes get them on top-water baits like Pop-R’s, but out in the open, it’s usually too windy for that.” Source

The other cool thing about fall smallmouth bass fishing on Lake St. Clair is that there are less anglers out there and more smallies for you!