The Ins And Outs Of Great Lakes Smallmouths

By David A. Brown
Special to BassFan

Millionaire’s Row, Boldt Castle, Singer Castle, Devil’s Oven, the statue of St. Lawrence overlooking his namesake river – there’s plenty to see while touring the 1,000 Islands region bordered by Upstate New York and Ontario; but head into Lake Ontario and some of the area’s top angling attractions are well beyond the reach of human sight.

Largemouth own a big chunk of the river action, but the brown fish with the striped cheeks rule the Great Lakes. New Hampshire pro Joe Lucarelli, who has a 1,000 Islands tournament win to his credit, allowed me to pick his brain on his strategy for searching a Great Lake.

Here’s a rundown of his key points:

> Managed Ambition: Few would indulge the notion of fishing the entire lake in the span of a tournament week; but even within the context of geographic range, Lucarelli said the smart strategy carves off a reasonable chunk, commits to a thorough examination and ignores the temptation to burn the clock by chasing every “what if” that beckons like the Sea Sirens tormenting Odysseus with their seductive song.

Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic, but sticking with a well-selected area beats burning a tank of gas and finding you’ve accomplished little more than a glorified lake tour.

> Know the Differences: With breaks and various rock formations the primary habitat features for most of Lake Ontario, the isolated grass of Chaumont Bay, just south of Clayton, N.Y. on the river’s south shore, offers ideal habitat for yellow perch, which tend to gather there in late summer through fall. Knowing this, smallies will venture off the main lake to gorge on the orange-belly panfish.

> It’s Not All Deep: The vastness of a Great Lake’s plunging offshore ranges shouldn’t hide the fact that some of those big rocks sitting in 6 to 8 feet of water occasionally hold some whopper smallmouth that won’t hesitate to put the chomp on a jerkbait, spinnerbait or even a medium-running crankbait.

During our trip, Lucarelli gave a stretch of shoreline boulders enough opportunity to show him something promising, but the lack of response gave him a clear read on where the fish were not.

"With a fishery like the 1,000 Islands, there are so many fish in it that if you don't even catch a 2-pounder, then that tells me that the shallow thing is not the deal," he said.

> Quality over Quantity: Graphing a bunch of fish might thrill the inexperienced angler, but Lucarelli’s far more discerning. I watched him examine a set of main-lake rocks outside of Chaumont in about 20 feet of water and suddenly toss out a marker buoy as he grinned with approval.

My host had spotted a sizeable boulder with a small cluster of heavy fish marks. These, he said, were the big smallmouth he sought – a far more gratifying image than a cloud of smaller fish.

"I want to see two to three good hooks (on the sonar), because the bigger the fish, the more color you have in the hook," Lucarelli said. "If you see two or three hooks, there's obviously more fish down there, you just didn’t see them when you drove over them. But if you see a ton of fish on the screen, there's only so much bait for these fish to feed on."

Likening the scene to deer habitat with limited food supplies stretched across too many animals, Lucarelli said he’d rather have a handful of big smallies to target than a couple dozen 2 1/2-pounders fighting for everything that drops in front of them.

> No Gobies, No Go: They’re invasive, they disrupt natural ecosystem balances and they are not liked by fisheries managers; but there’s no escaping the fact that round gobies have become a significant factor in Great Lakes smallmouth fishing. So much so that Lucarelli considers this non-native forage species a major indicator of a spot’s potential.

Case in point, during one of our stops, he noted that he was less concerned over catching only a small keeper than he was over the apparent lack of gobies.

"I'm just not getting the goby bites here – that's gotta mean something," he said. "Those (smallmouth) are not out on the rocks because they think it's cool. They're there because they want to eat. So if the bait's not there, then the fish aren't going to be there.

"There's nothing better than throwing a dropshot and you feel the tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap and all of a sudden the tapping stops and then you have that one (big) bite and the rod just loads up. That's the gobies drawing attention to your bait, a smallmouth coming over to your bait, the goby getting out of there because he doesn’t want to get smoked and then you catching the smallmouth.”

> Look Both Ways: It’s not just something we teach kids about road-crossing safety; it’s a time-management strategy that helps you find more spots and, ideally, catch more fish.

Case in point: While idling the rocky perimeter of Galoo Island, Lucarelli kept his Humminbird side-imaging beams set at 80 feet on both sides. This, he said, is his comfort zone for a broad search with clear resolution.

When a particularly intriguing set of boulders off the starboard side drew his attention, Lucarelli shot a waypoint out to the structure with plans to check it out after graphing his current spot. A few minutes later, he idled over to that waypoint and soon brought a couple of brown footballs of 5 and 4 pounds to the boat.

"You can't beat that side-imaging when it comes to finding fish on the Great Lakes," he said. "These lakes are just so vast, it just saves you so much time. If you can determine if the fish are on rocks or other types of things, you can duplicate that over and over again."

> The Smell of Success: So, what’s the one thing Lucarelli can’t live without on the Great Lakes? Peanut butter.

Yep, peanut butter. Add a loaf of bread and he has a quick lunch option, but there’s a deeper meaning here. Because Lucarelli hits his dropshot baits with garlic spray, he often finds the pungent odor hanging heavily on his hands.

Solution? Rub a gob of smooth, creamy peanut butter between his hands, rinse them in lake water and it’s goodbye spice rack; hello smallmouth.