By Louie Stout

Spawning bass destroyed the shorter Crawler tube.STURGEON BAY, Wisc. - Spawning smallmouth bass tend to be a little stupid. They’ll bite just about anything that slithers across their beds.

But on this crisp weekday morning, I was dueling with one that played hard to get. I could see him snub my tube jig each time I made a properly placed cast.

I looked at Dan Elsner, owner of Get Bit Baits, and shrugged.

“I’ve thrown in there with my tube three times,” I grumbled. “The fish noses down on it but won’t hit it.” Of course, that’s nothing new. Elsner, an avid bass angler who live near this fabulous fishery, had been out-fishing me 4-1.

But this fish was driving me crazy.

And then I remembered: I was fishing one of his 3 ½-inch tubes; he was using one of the same color, but it was only 2½ inches long.

Could size be the difference?

“Throw your smaller version in there and see what happens,” I told him.

His tube hit the water and the 3-pound smallie engulfed it.

Elsner unhooked the fish, released it to swim back to the bed, and smiled.

“Told ya,” he said. “Early in the season, the bass here at Sturgeon Bay seem to prefer the shorter tubes. Once the water warms the bigger tubes come into play.”

I dug into his tackle box, tied on the smaller tube like he was using and proceeded to match him fish-for-fish.

That’s one of the many things I love about fishing; no matter how many years you fish, there’s always something you can learn from others.

The standard size tubes always have worked well on smallmouth for me, but that experiment showed that downsizing can make a difference.

So can jig head sizes. We were using 1/8-ounce jigs that were inserted into the cavity of the bait. The shorter-shanked 1/0 jig heads he uses on shorter tubes snagged in the rocks far less than my preferred 3/16-ounce jig heads with 2/0 and 3/0 hooks.

And another thing - the more stubborn bedding fish seemed to be more easily fooled with Get Bit Baits’ unique Crawler Tube. It is a standard tube bait but has a few strands of skirting material hand sewn through the body that hang outside like legs on a spider.

When I saw the Crawler, I was skeptical, but Elsner insists that it catches the more finicky fish.

It did.

“When the tube is sitting still, the natural currents of the water cause the strands to oscillate,” Elsner described.

We were fishing the rocky shallows of Sturgeon Bay, a 10-mile long bay off Lake Michigan in the Door Peninsula. The Bay was recently named the nation’s best bass fishery by Bassmaster Magazine. I was there on assignment for its B.A.S.S. Times, its sister publication.

Get Bit Baits tubes were designed to appeal to smallmouth.How good was fishing? In five hours we caught 70 smallmouth that averaged close to 3 pounds and could have caught more. We didn’t catch any of the 5 and 6 pounders that have made the fishery famous, but it is definitely loaded with quality bass.

Only a week before, it took an 8 pounder to win big bass honors in the Sturgeon Bay Open. Elsner and his partner had a limit of bass that averaged more than 4½ pounds and finished 19th!

The Door Peninsula is a beautiful area for tourists and the bay is a mecca for all types of fishing. Most of locals fish for trout, salmon and walleye, but it has come on strong as a smallmouth mecca.

Rightfully so. The clean waters are loaded with large, wind-protected harbors accented with ideal bottom structure, several rock islands, boulder strewn banks, a few grass beds and abundant forage.

During the spring, water temperatures can vary greatly. For example, the first day we fished for pre-spawn bass in the northern end of the bay where the water was 48 degrees. We caught 37 that day.

The next day we went to the south end where we found smallmouth bedding in 60-degree water!

Some say the bass have flourished with the invasion of non-native gobies, a goofy looking exotic forage fish that came here in the ballast water of foreign cargo ships.

Whatever the reason, rest assured that Sturgeon Bay smallmouth are plentiful and healthy – worthy of Bassmaster Magazine’s top billing.

(Editor’s note: Visit HYPERLINK "http://www.doorcounty.com" www.doorcounty.com for more information about the Sturgeon Bay area and www.getbitbaits.com for details on Elsner’s tubes.)