Tackle Shack Report
Jonathan Brock and Christopher Martin outdueled other Tackle Shack competitors on wind-blow Lake St. Clair Saturday.
The two-day tournament was shortened to one day due to high wind and foul weather forecast for Sunday.
Brock and Martin still gathered 25.29 pounds to go home with the $3,300 first-place prize money.
“We came up Wednesday, and decided to fish Lake Erie,” says Martin. “We caught some nice fish but didn't think we could ever get back with the weather forecast, so we fished the river and Lake St Clair the next two days.”
He said they located bigger fish in practice on the Detroit River.
“On Saturday we stopped short of our waypoints and proceeded to have a great first hour which we had around 22 pounds on Chatterbaits and spinnerbaits in 2 to 5 feet of water.”
Martin said they threw back a few 4-4 1/2 pounders that wouldn’t cull. Their big fish was a 6.60-pound smallmouth.
Bill Mathews and Kris Iodice were second with 23.66 pounds to win $2,200 for the tournament and added another $1,050 for being the Angler Team of the Year.
“Kris and I drove up Friday morning and got on the water around 9:30 and spent nearly a full day on the water,” explains Mathews. “We have a bit of experience on Lake St. Clair and we knew we wanted to target the lake as long as the weather cooperated.”
He said the weather was pretty dicey between practice and the tournament day, but they were able to fish a few miles out without much issue.
“We have only fished the north end of St. Clair and we knew that it was going to be out of question with the strong wind blowing north,” he adds. “We began our research a week before the event and started looking for areas on the lake we wanted to check on the south side.”
The first spot they checked during practice proved to be the key area for them. They headed further out into the lake when Kris noticed something on his Navionics App that he thought they should check.
“We pulled up, I caught a nearly 4 pounder on my third cast,” says Mathews. “Then Kris ended up catching two more around 4 pounds as well. We left the area after that. We ended up finding two more areas that had a lot of fish. We caught around 50 bass during practice.”
They started the tournament on a spot where they caught one good one in practice, but didn’t get a bite.
“We then headed out to the first spot we found in practice and Kris caught one on the BAFA F8 jighead with a 2.8" Keitech swimbait,” says Mathews. “I then followed it up with a good one on the F8 jighead and a Rapala Crush City Mayor. We went back and forth catching good ones for a while. The spot was absolutely loaded. We got to the point where we were no longer able to upgrade and decided to leave.”
They bounced around some new areas for a while without much luck, then returned to that area and managed to upgrade one more time. They decided to go find one more upgrade since they still had one bass around 3.75 pounds to cull.
“We went to the spot we found at the end of practice and Kris hooked up with a 4.25 pounder to make our last cull of the day with about an hour left to fish.”
Their key baits were the BAFA F8 jighead and a variety of finesse swimbaits including the Crush City Mayor, the 2.8" keitech and the Spark Shad. They also caught a few fish on a rig and a handful on a spinnerbait as well, but the bigger bites came on the smaller swimbaits.
Tom Bond and Brian Souza were third with 21.62 pounds for $1,200.
“With the lake being so rough and running a smaller boat our plans to run to the North Bay area got scrapped so we had to focus areas closer to the launch,” says Souza. “We caught most on A-rigs and swimbaits by drifting around 10 feet of water.”
Mason Alverado and Mike Ganger caught the biggest bass ever weighed in during a Tackle Shack tournament. The 7.45-pound smallmouth earned them 500.
They chose spots on the Detroit River where Alverado caught the giant bass late morning.
“A fish of that caliber in the current was a heck of a fight, we both kind of sat there silently after we weighed her - a world class smallie for sure,” says Ganger. “Overall, it was a struggle with the wind playing havoc with the current, but we closed out our limit with a 5.5 to get to 20 pounds. We just couldn't get another big bite to cull out the smaller ones.”
All of their fish came on crankbaits and tubes.