Will Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Be Better Than Erie?

 Story by Pete Robbins - Photos by Mark Jeffreys  

Escanaba, Mich. – When BASS released the 2009 and 2010 Elite Series schedules, competitors and fans weren’t surprised to see some familiar places on the info sheets. Stalwarts from 2008 like Amistad, Wheeler, Kentucky, Champlain, Oneida and Erie will be back at least once. Previous tour stops like Guntersville, Clear Lake, the California Delta and Smith Mountain Lake will also host the tour pros over the next two years. 

Even the Mississippi River near Fort Madison, Iowa, while new to the Elite Series, is familiar to many of the Elite Series competitors. It hosted a BASS Open in the past and was scheduled to host an Elite Series tournament this year until flood conditions forced a move to Old Hickory.

But the one tour stop that may have drawn a “huh?” from the majority of readers was the July event at Escanaba, Michigan.

Have there been past events there?
Lake Michigan hosted the 2000 Bassmaster Classic, but that tournament launched out of downtown Chicago, with weigh-ins at Solider Field. That’s a 315 mile trip from Escanaba on land, and nearly as far on the water. No angler will be able to make the reverse trip via boat during the tournament, and few would want to since fishing was poor at the Chicago Classic.

But there are BASS tournaments at Bay de Noc on occasion, including BFLs. The last pro-level event that either of the two major tournament organizations held there was the 2005 Midwest Everstart, which was won by western legend and former BASS tour-level pro Dave Gliebe. 

Current Elite Series pros who fished the 2005 event included Fred Roumbanis (8th), Kota Kiriyama (19th), Bill Lowen (21st) and Dave Smith (48th). Charlie Hartley finished 47th. 

Will long runs be required?
Gliebe won the tournament on a single spot. He caught four for 16-12 on day one, four for 14-14 on day two, and limits that weighed 22-04 and 20-10 on the final days. He relied heavily on a single spot less than 15 minutes from the take-off site. 

“I could win again on that same spot,” Gliebe said. “I found it on my GPS, but it took me two days to figure out the place. It was a hump of the edge of a 35 foot deep channel and the back side slopes off. It had a grass line in 14 feet of water and then a thousand feet of gigantic boulders tapering down.”

In addition to fishing the 2005 Everstart, 2008 Erie winner Kota Kiriyama spent 2 ½ days scouting Bay de Noc at the end of this year’s Elite Series season. He said that even though it may not be necessary to make long runs, the nature of the fishery require that an angler be prepared to move a lot over the course of the day.

“A lot of people will try to find that super honey hole,” he said. “But it’s hit and miss there. On Erie, if you find a good looking spot it almost always has fish.” 

Kevin Short also traveled to Michigan upon the completion of the Oneida tournament and he agreed with Kiriyama that the fish did not bunch up the way they do on Erie.

“I’m not smallmouth expert by any means,” Short said. “But I just did not catch three pounders like you do at Erie. There are spots at Erie that are loaded with them. “

Will it get as rough as Erie?
Both Short and Kiriyama agree that a tournament on Lake Michigan is even more likely to result in canceled tournament days than an Erie event. 

“It’s the northern end of Green Bay and it’s 25 to 30 miles wide and 200 miles long and the wind comes out of the south every day,” Short said. “There are going to be some rough boat rides. I don’t see any way in the world we’ll get to fish all four days. I’ll be surprised if we get to fish three days. You can’t tell how rough it is until you get 10 to 12 miles out. I spent four days there and on two of those days It was pretty bad. I only had one day that was pretty nice so you could move around.”

Both Short and Kiriyama were quick to credit the BASS tournament staff with exercising appropriate caution in recent years, but Short cautioned that even when care is exercised, the Great Lakes can get dangerous in a hurry and it might not always be possible for an official on shore to make the right call.

“Trip (Weldon) and Chris Bowes do a wonderful job, but you still have to stay on your toes,” he said. “I hate to say it, but sooner or later somebody is going to get hurt. This is worse than Erie and there you’re only a quarter-mile from the waves. Here, you have to go 10 miles until you realize how bad it is.”

“It’s a gorgeous place, just beautiful,” he continued, “But it’s scary.” 

Is the caliber of the fishery comparable to Erie’s?
If the 2005 Everstart is any indication, Kiriyama’s 93 pounds this year at Erie will not be topped at Bay de Noc. Gliebe didn’t weigh in a limit either of the first two days, falling one fish short each time.

“I probably lost half a dozen fish over five pounds each day,” he said. “They just jumped off.”

He averaged less than 16 pounds a day in the initial two-day cut round. It took 27-09 to make the cut to ten. While Gliebe caught over 42 pounds during the final two days to claim the victory, five of the remaining ten caught 21-01 or less combined on days three and four. Only two anglers in the field caught a five bass limit all four days. 

The money line (32nd out of 114 competitors) was only 19-08. While the comparison is somewhat akin to apples and oranges, it does bear mentioning that an angler who caught 19-08 would have finished 97th in the 2008 Elite Series event on Erie and 101st in the 2007 tournament. The Opens may be a better comparison of the overall talent level. That weight in the 2006 and 2005 BASS Opens on Erie would have produced finishes of 24th (out of 81) and 67th (out of 146), respectively.

Still, Gliebe believes that it may take over 90 pounds to win next season’s Elite Series event. “I had (several) fish over eight pounds follow fish in and I caught two sixes,” he said. 

Short disagreed. “I certainly don’t think there are big bunches of four and five pound fish,” he opined. “I think they’re there (in Michigan), but you just can’t cover enough water in a day to catch them.”

For Kiriyama, the jury is still out. He caught “a few five pounders” the last time he was there, but it wasn’t quite enough to convince him. “I don’t think they have as many as Erie, or maybe I just didn’t catch them,” he said. 

Will the primary techniques be a dropshot and a tube?
Over the last few years, the “Erie tube drag” has given way to the dropshot as the winning technique in Elite Series tournaments on Lake Erie. Will that trend continue in 2009 when the Elites head to Escanaba?

Gliebe believes if he were entered he could win the tournament on the same spot that produced his victory and that the “green tube” that caught all of his fish in 2005 would be “just fine again.”

Kiriyama, who won this year’s Erie event on a dropshot fished over super-deep water for suspended smallmouths, believes that the fish may live deeper than they do on Erie. “It gets super-cold in the winter so I guess the baitfish go deeper than Erie,” he said. “Last time I was there I caught them real deep, but it was ‘only’ 50 to 60 feet. I’m going to spend more time out in deeper water looking around.” That analysis would seemingly favor the dropshot or another purely vertical presentation. 

Short acknowledged that the tube and dropshot could be effective, but left his scouting trip a bit confused. Bay de Noc seemed dissimilar from the portions of Erie he has fished. “There’s a lot of shallow water with rocks and grass,” he said. “It’s totally different than Erie. On Erie there are places where you can catch them shallow on a tube or jerkbait but they’re not the right fish to win.” He’s not sure if that’ll be the case when BASS heads to Michigan next year.

He’s not sure that enough is known about the fishery to make an educated guess about any of this right now: “I really question why in the world we’re going there,” he said. “Nobody fishes for bass up there. They fish for walleye, pike and perch, so I’m scratching my head. The fishing is fabulous because nobody really cares about bass. I’m saying that tongue in cheek but I’m also kind of serious. You go to the tackle store and all the stuff on the wall is for walleye and pike.”

But Short also noted that the place is “large with a capital ‘L,” so the potential for both big water and big catches is probably there. And if the brief history of the Elite Series has shown us anything, it’s that when the pros head to a new body of water, particularly one that’s isolated, they usually shatter the expectations, if not the record book.