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Meet Your Guide

I love fishing for smallmouth bass!  Although I started fishing when I was a kid, I didn’t catch my first smallmouth until the summer of 1987.  I was living and working in western Maryland at the time, and I found myself re-discovering my love for the outdoors.

 

One particular fishing trip took me to the South Branch of the Potomac River where it winds its way through the Alleghany Mountains in West Virginia.  It was here that I caught a fish that would literally change my life – my first smallmouth.  I was immediately drawn to the aggressive nature and scrappiness of that little brown fish.  Over the next three years I spent countless days chasing them on the shallow South Branch, learning everything I could about where they lived and how they fed.  Slowly but surely I was becoming obsessed with catching smallmouth.  I started reading every magazine and book I could get my hands on, and watching every TV show I could find, trying to learn everything I could about fishing for bass. 

 

I kept coming across magazine articles and stories on TV shows that talked about how good the smallmouth fishing was on Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie.  In 1990 an employment opportunity came up in the Detroit area – right in the heart of Great Lakes smallmouth country - and I jumped at the chance to re-locate.  It took less than two years of trying to fish from shore on Lake St. Clair before I got frustrated and realized that shore-fishing up here just wasn’t going to cut it.  So I bought my first boat in September of 1992 and quickly realized how lucky I am to live next to the best smallmouth lake in the country.

 

Now here it is over twenty years later, and I’m just as crazy about Mr. Smallmouth today as I was when I caught that first one in 1987.  It just never gets boring and I can’t get enough!

 

My goal as your guide is to try to teach you some of what I’ve learned about catching smallmouth on Lake St. Clair.  You will learn why we are using a particular lure or technique, and I will take the time to teach you how to do it if you don’t already know how.  Hopefully, by the end of the day you will have learned something that you can take with you to help you catch more bass on this fantastic fishery.

 

Fishing Accomplishments:

Two years after getting my first boat I decided to try out tournament fishing.  In 1994 I joined a bass club and started fishing club tournaments on Lake St. Clair and its connecting waters.  In two years of club fishing I accumulated six wins and numerous second and third place finishes.

 

I started fishing the Michigan Division of FLW Outdoors’ Bass Fishing League in 1996 (known back then as the Redman Tournament Trail).  I have earned four top 10 finishes, numerous top 20’s, a Big Bass Award, and have become a regular qualifier for the BFL Regional Tournaments.


In August 2007, my tournament partner and I won the 9th Annual Wonderland Marine West Open on the Detroit River.  The Wonderland Open is the biggest team bass tournament held in southeast Michigan each year, and it attracts the best bass anglers in our region.  We weighed a five bass limit of smallmouth that tipped the scales at 25lbs. 15oz.  Included in our winning limit was a 6lb. smallie that also won the Big Bass Award.  You can read more about how we did at LURENET.com.

In September 2006 I caught two of the top five smallmouth registered in the Michigan DNR Master Angler Award Program, for catch-and-release.  They weighed 6lbs. 13oz. and 7lbs. even, and measured 23” and 23 ½”.  These fish were also the first and second biggest smallmouth entered in In-Fisherman Magazine’s 2006 Master Angler Program for catch-and-release in this region.