By Louie Stout
Today’s young Great Lakes smallmouth anglers have no idea how lucky they are.
They hop in their wide, lengthy bass boats and pull up detailed maps on big-screen electronics loaded with waypoints that guide them to giant smallmouth hotspots.
They plow through big waves with powerful engines bolted to boats far safer than models of yesteryear en route to hidden honey holes miles offshore. Once they arrive, their electronics will show them details of the bottom, schools of baitfish and bass chasing them in real-time.
That’s not how it used to be. Decades ago, offshore fishing on the Great Lakes from a bass boat was considered a dangerous endeavor.
But it wasn’t the technology that led to this offshore bonanza. The pioneers who discovered these far-flung fisheries without today’s sophisticated fishing and navigational electronics are the reason we no longer have to fish within sight of the shore. Remarkably, they took those risks to catch smallmouth bass much smaller than the fish being caught today. A 12- to 15-pound limit was considered pretty good in those days. Today? The influx of non-native gobies has fattened up the big brown fish. Five smallmouth weighing 20 pounds may not even get you a check in today’s tournaments. While Ohioan Steve Clapper often gets credit for leading the charge, Michigan guys like Joe Balog, Neil Vande Biezen, Mark Modrak, Kim Stricker and Mark Zona were key players as well. They were among a small group of tournament anglers who pushed the limit in the early 1990s to find glory holes where few others had been. “It was scary, including on Lake St. Clair,” recalled Zona. “We used boats that were completely under-equipped for going miles offshore. Once we got out there, the only way to find the fish was to drag a tube jig for miles until you hit a hot spot—and then hope you could get back safely.”
So why did they take such risks when overmatched by the powerful waters and unpredictable storms? “For the same reason we do it today—to get somewhere that a smallmouth may have never seen a lure,” he insisted. “It intrigued me then and does now, which is why I do a lot of my Zona’s Awesome TV Shows in places I’ve never been.”
Here is how he and other Michigan pioneers described the early beginnings of the Great Lakes smallmouth craze:
Joe Balog
Balog grew up fishing for walleyes on his dad’s charter boat in the Cleveland area before moving to Harrison Township on the shores of Lake St. Clair.
“I was a teenager who became fascinated with Lake Erie bass tournaments and learned from those guys,” he said.
He recalls how boats weren’t equipped to hold on structure or to battle big waves like they are today. In those days the 17- and 18-foot bass boats had short-shafted, hand-controlled trolling motors, smaller batteries and one small bilge pump.
“We would go upwind, throw out a drift sock and drag tubes,” he noted. “Dan Devera was the first guy I saw with a long shaft trolling motor. He would throw a marker buoy on a hump, stand on the bow and use the longer trolling motor to hold there, regardless of how many waves broke over the bow.”
The early smallmouth anglers learned to adapt, adding bigger batteries to power the trolling motor and multiple bilge pumps. Rear compartment areas were modified to carry multiple batteries. Trolling motor brackets were beefed up and outboard bolts were double-nutted. Some carried spare hoses and bilge pumps to rid water taken over the bow from spearing big waves. Five-blade props were added for more bite when climbing waves.
“We became pretty good at negotiating big waves and fishing isolated structure,” explained Balog.
Meanwhile, Michigan anglers participating in the Erie tourneys picked up on the Ohio trends. Lake St. Clair tourneys grew in popularity.
Anglers studied old paper charts that marked structure in longitude and latitude coordinates. They often used compasses to find their way. Initially, fishing was done a mile or less offshore, but when rudimentary Loran C navigation electronics became available, they ventured farther. However, Loran C relied on radio transmissions that weren’t very accurate. Unlike today’s GPS, early navigational equipment would “get you in the area, but then you had to drive around and look for the fish and structure,” said Balog.
Early fish-finding electronics were limited to flashers, a round dial with bottom and depth readings that would show fish off the bottom if you held the boat steady.
“The guys who were winning tournaments had to study weather patterns and wind direction and learn how to use land breaks for running the boat efficiently,” says Balog. “Most other people were clueless.”
Neil Vande Biezen
While most of the Michigan pioneers were exploring the state’s east side, Vande Biezen dominated west-side bass tournaments held on Lake Michigan’s connecting waters. He entered tournaments on the Grand River or Muskegon Lake, but would exit into Lake Michigan and make 70- to 90-mile runs to Michigan’s connecting drowned river mouth waters.
And he did it in an 18-foot boat with a 150 HP outboard with only paper maps and no GPS.
“On a calm day it would take about two hours—if the wind didn’t come up,” joked the Kalamazoo angler, who was one of the first tournament anglers to run 90 miles to a fishing spot. “I missed a lot of weigh-ins trying to get back, but if I made it, it was worth it.”
Vande Biezen said he would plot out his trip beforehand. He would trailer to Portage, Manistee, Ludington or White Lake a few days prior to a tournament and fish for smallmouth inside the break walls or in connecting inland waters. He searched for gas pumps between his tourney take-off and his fishing location.
“Back then, we didn’t have big tanks, and you couldn’t make it back without gassing up,” he said.
Armed with a basic Vexilar flasher, he would idle around the waters during practice, looking for specific structure and then spend time fishing to determine if it was worth the run.
Weather forecasts were even less accurate than today, so he often got caught in storms. One time, his boat lost power and filled up with water in eight-foot waves. He threw out a drift sock and tried to keep the nose into the waves to avoid the boat turning over. He eventually got the motor started and pulled into the nearest port.
Another time, the fog moved in, and waves were four- to six-footers. He eventually made it back to weigh-in, 45 minutes late, and the jack plate on his motor was hanging on by only 1½ bolts.
“A lot of people wouldn’t do what I did and never knew where I was fishing,” he said. “It was risky, but I knew how to handle it. And I made a lot of money making those runs back in those early days.”
Mark Modrak
Before any kind of navigation equipment was available, the China Township angler had to rely on compass readings and clock-watching to manage his time to and from a spot.
“And if the lake was rough, it was difficult to travel in a straight line,” he says. “That’s why a lot of anglers stayed close to shore in those tournaments.”
When lake charts became available, you could get a general idea as to where the fish-holding reefs were located, but even that wasn’t an exact science.
And Lake St. Clair?
“It was different because the lake was free of any real structure other than grass beds and sand spots,” explained Modrak, who began fishing big water in 1987. “You either fished the river or hoped to stumble onto them in areas within sight of shore.”
One tactic he would use if he found remote hotspots offshore during practice was to drop a duck decoy or plastic jug tied to a weighted line and sink it, then use compass readings to find the spot during competition.
“When Loran C became available, I thought it would be a big advantage,” he noted. “But it was government controlled, and on Lake St. Clair, the signal would be turned on and off all the time.”
He remembers making the 18- to 19-mile run to Mitchell’s Bay from Harley Ensign boat launch in his 17-foot boat with a 150-horse outboard. “It took forever, and you never knew if you would get back on time,” Modrak said. “Now, there’s nothing to it.”
Tournaments on shallow Saginaw Bay were even more treacherous because the weather would blow up quickly.
“Once the swells got big, if you didn’t stay on top of them, you would bottom out, stall the motor and the next wave filled the boat,” he described. “A lot of bass boats got swamped there.”
When he bought a new boat, he would order one with dual bilge pumps. He would put longer bolts, big washers and nuts to secure the trolling motor mount better than the factory installation and upgrade battery tie-downs.
Otherwise, boat runs through and over powerful waves would knock everything loose.
He also carried a battery-powered marine radio and extra clothes in big Ziploc bags and kept all of his safety equipment and flares up to date.
Kim Stricker
Stricker says that before gobies were introduced into the Great Lakes, most fish were caught shallow. While he didn’t spend a lot of time fishing big water, he honed his craft in the rivers that flowed in and out of the Great Lakes into Lake St. Clair.
“Once the fish were done spawning in the shallows of St. Clair, I moved into the channels and covered a lot of water for days looking for new places,” he recalled.
The channels leading into St. Clair were protected from the wind and big waves. Even so, you had to rely on landmarks and memory to return to isolated hot spots. Stricker ruled a lot of tournaments in those early days because of his knowledge of the river, which he gained without modern-day electronics.
“I would tie on a crankbait, and it was my fish finder,” said Stricker, who won a 1994 Bassmaster tournament on a crankbait. “Once I caught a fish, I’d study the area with my flasher sonar to see what structure was there. Often, it was an eddy created by a change in bottom contour or weed growth.”
He said the river smallmouth spent most of their time shallow, tucked in those eddies or bucking the strong current.
“Once the gobies came in and the bass were keying on them in deeper water, you had to simply drag a tube jig to find the fish,” he said. “In 1997, I got an Aqua-Vu underwater camera and dragged it along the channel bottom looking for fish. That’s how I found the fish to finish fifth in that Bassmaster event.”
Mark Zona
The host of Zona’s Awesome Fishing Show said that the only way to find smallmouth locations miles offshore during those early days was to keep your lure in the water.
“It was very intimidating and still is,” he said. “To go out on the Great Lakes so far you couldn’t see shore—with the equipment we had at the time—was stupid. It still kinda is; I still get a bit freaked out about it.”
Early in his career, he began to explore offshore, making long runs to the Canadian side of Lake St. Clair or out to Pelee Island on Lake Erie where he would drag tubes. When he told people what he was doing, they looked at him like he was crazy, said Zona.
“Whether we were fishing the western end of Lake Erie, St. Clair or Lake Huron, you would basically put your trolling motor in the water, throw out a wind sock and learn the bottom by feeling what the tube jig was hitting as you dragged it behind you—for miles,” he recalled. “If you felt your bait hit rocks, you knew something good was about to happen.”
He admits there were times he thought he wouldn’t make it back to land but never lost the desire to push farther to find that mega school of smallmouth bass.
Those desires exist today, but modern electronics and better-equipped boats make it a great deal easier.
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