by John Cleveland

There are significant perks to being inthe fishing business. One of them is theopportunity to have customers sharefishing stories and occasionally divulgedetails about their favorite places to fishwhile I’m working the sport show circuitrepresenting Eppinger. Sometimes I’meven lucky enough to have customersinvite me to their favorite fishingdestinations and experience the great

adventures they’ve told me about. One of our regular customers, Frank

Roggenbuck, has been telling us talesabout the incredible spring smallmouthfishing in the Thessalon area in AlgomaCountry. The Algoma region consists ofover 18,000 square miles of wild CanadianShield granite, lush forests and hundredsof glacial kettle lakes with ribbons of clear,cool streams. My friend and fishingpartner Mike McGuire decided to makethe trip this past spring. Thessalon is

located 50 miles east of Sault Ste. Marie,Ontario and the International Bridge is anexcellent base for fishing and outdooradventures. There are also motels andresorts catering to families and sportsmen.

Frank has 28 years of experiencefishing in Algoma Country and explainedthe best fishing begins when the watertemperatures reach 40 degrees in spring.The prime range is 44 to 50 degrees forsmallmouths here. When fishing just afterice-out, there’s no need to be on the water

early. In the early spring, bass begin tomove into the shallow water in the latemorning, approximately 10 a.m. or so. Oneof his early-season strategies is to anchoroff of a shallow point and watch as big,blocky shadows emerge from the deep,positioning themselves on shallow sunlitbays and reefs. Then you can do sightfishing to the marauding football-sizedshadows cruising below. The fish willgenerally stay in the shallows until lateafternoon before moving back into thedeeper waters for the night. We found thebest fishing was over boulder fields, rocky,submerged points and breaks near deepdrop-offs. The exception was oneparticular bay that was full of huge,aggressive bronzebacks on our lastafternoon fishing a local lake.

Lessons learnedOur first day on the water was a reality

check—we had expected smallmouths tobe leaping into the boat like frogs after thestories we had heard. An early ice-out hadchanged the usual patterns of the bass forthis time of year, creating a less aggressivebite. I landed my first smallmouth afterthree hours of pounding the water withspoons. I landed my next bass a couplehours later. We found the fishingchallenging and hoped we could get somegood tips from the crew back at camp.Much to our surprise, the other guys hadbeen quite successful and caught goodnumbers of big bass. They discovered ittook a very slow retrieve with a long pauseto get the bass to commit. The take wasalmost always as the lure sat suspended inthe water column. In the fog ofenthusiasm, Mike and I had continued tofish hard and fast all day not taking time toanalyze why we weren’t catching. Lessonlearned.

The next two days we slowedeverything down and tried the retrievepause mantra with much better results. Weboated 20 to 24 bass with many up to 6pounds along with pike up to 10. Frank’sinsights were very helpful to us as this wasour first time fishing this region. Hesuggests switching out baits every 10 to 15minutes until you discover what the bassare seeking out as forage. It would varythroughout the day as we prospected thelake. We would usually start with smeltimitations then switch to leech, crawfish orother baitfish patterns until we found whatthe bass were going to hit as we workedthe varied structure while slowlymaneuvering parallel to shore.

Smallmouths love smeltMany of these lakes have robust

populations of smelt. These high-proteinforage fish are a favorite snack forsmallmouths. Smelt begin to spawn whenthe water temperatures reach 45 degrees,and the bite can be spectacular on thesandy flats where they spawn. Large

February 2017Page 94 MidWest Outdoors “Helping you enjoy the outdoors”

Algoma Bronze

The size and quality of smallmouths in the Thessalon area are impressive.

John Cleveland and the boys did catch a few big hawgson spoons in deeper water.

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Eppinger Big Ed flutter spoons in Baitfishpatterns and big Silver Streamers areespecially effective if you are luckyenough to hit the smelt run. The 50- to 60-fish days are not unheard of during thepeak of the smelt run, according to Frank.

The ‘Bay of Pigs’Mike and I fished hard all morning and

he landed a dozen nice bass that ranged 4to 6 pounds using silver and blue bodybaits similar to the Eppinger Sparkle tailminnows. We took a break for lunch and apower nap back at our cabin and returnedat 3 p.m. As it turned out, this would bemy afternoon to hit the smallmouth motherlode using my fly rod. The wind wasblowing out of the north at 15 mph as wenavigated slowly along the points andbreaks casting toward shore whileretrieving with a slow, steady cadence. Wepaused often in anticipation of the thumpof a big bass. As we had learned earlier,smallmouths almost always hit our lures asthey sat suspended and motionless in thewater column. As we rounded a long,rocky point, we came to the opening of a10-acre bay with the wind blowing directlyinto its mouth, making the surface choppyand awash with foam. Windblownshorelines and bays are high-percentagetargets for finding fish as the wind willblow baitfish into the bay and stir upaquatic life from the bottom. This creates anatural feeding trough, thus formingpotentially high concentrations of fish. Ilaunched a crawfish pattern into the wind

and let the fly sink to the bottom. With thefirst strip and pause of the fly, I felt a solid“thump” as a big bass grabbed my fly andcharged around the bay bulldogging whiletrying to shake the fly before coming tothe net. I soon discovered I had hit paydirt, as this bay was full of big hungry bassthat enjoyed the crawfish. Smallmouths hitmy fly like a piece of red meat for the nexthour as I brought 12 to 15 fish to the boat,averaging 4 to 6 pounds with the bestmeasuring just under 22 inches. They wereexceptionally large-bodied fish with thebrawny girth of a linebacker that put upspectacular battles on light tackle. At 6p.m. the wind died down and the biteturned off.

Equipment recommendationsWe equipped ourselves with 6 1/2-foot

medium-weight spinning rods and 12-

pound-test braided line. There are goodquantities of northern pike in these lakesrequiring the use of light wire leaders orheavy fluorocarbon bite tippets to keeplures and flies from being bitten off whenambushed by a pike. When fly fishing forlarge smallmouths, I recommend a 7 or 8weight fly rod so you have control of theselarge fish without playing them out toexhaustion. The more weighted rod willalso help with casting sink-tip lines andlarge leech and streamer patterns preferredby these bass in the spring. I always bringa few surface plugs for my spinning gearand poppers and mouse imitations for myfly rod. There are occasions when bass willbecome hyper-aggressive in spring and hitanything that moves, including surfacepresentations.

Lure and fly recommendationsBody baits such as the Eppinger Rattlin

Devle and Sparkle Tail minnows, as wellas other brands of suspending plugs andswimbaits, all have their days on the water.Spoons are very versatile in working allpositions in the water column for bassincluding Eppinger’s Big Ed flutter spoon,1/2-ounce Cop E Cats and 3/4-ounceKlickers. If fly fishing, bring a goodselection of Clouser minnows, Deceivers,

Murdich minnows, Bunny Leeches,crawfish patterns, mouse imitations andsurface poppers. Colors should includerainbow smelt, crawfish, blue/silver,chartreuse, fire tiger, and baitfish patternsin various shades and colors such as white,silver, brown and black.

Mike and I learned a lot on our firstattempt at spring smallmouths in AlgomaCountry. Though we had expected to catchmore bass, what we did catch were someof the largest bronze beasts either of ushad ever had the pleasure of encountering.You can bet next spring we will be back inearly May, prepared to play with these bigbronzebacks of Algoma Country. MWO

John Cleveland may be reached atjohn@eppinger.net or by calling 313-582-3205.

Page 95February 2017 MidWest Outdoors “Helping you enjoy the outdoors”

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For more information…Email Algoma Tourism atinfo@algomacountry.com or call them at800-263-2546. Contact Don St. Jules,owner of Birch Lake Resort, at 705-842-2219 or visit birchlakeresort.net.

Mike McGuire with a couple of nice shallow-water bass.

Birch Lake Resort made for a convenient base camp while exploring the local lakes.

McGuire casting over a rocky shoal for football-sizedsmallmouths.

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