I was looking for more of the fantastic White Bass surface fishing like last year. The Mouth of the North Channel no longer has good public access. Decker's Landing has been closed for many months now due to very high lake levels. Many home and cottage owners are being flooded out or are fighting to save their homes from the high waters and big motor boat wakes. I put in at Saint Johns Marsh and made the long paddle downstream to outlet of the North Channel into Lake Saint Clair.
Along the way I threw bass and musky poppers in weedy bays, weedy dredge scars in deep flats, and deep dead current spots where flotsam was accumulating. I saw no fish. Near the mouth, the north channel gets wider and shallower, the current quickens, essentially flowing over a giant permanent weedy sand bar before it breaks free of the delta. I set up to drift in the current along the 8 foot contour of the channel. The water was clear and the bass could see my popper from the bottom as I cast it out across the current toward water 10 to 15 feet deep. Soon a very big smallmouth hit 16 feet from the kayak. He put my 10 pound leader at risk on a sudden run. He jumped, he was long, somewhat slender with a big head. On the high leap. he shook free of the 3/0 White Marabou Banger popper.
I set up to take video and continued the drift, soon a giant 5 foot sturgeon rocketed up out of the water, right in the camera's field of view at T = X:XX, but alas, he missed my popper by a mile. I continued to make drifts, pounding lots of similar water, deeper and faster current, shallower and slower water. Along some good shoreline cover I got a decent largemouth. In deeper drifts I had several hits and caught a couple of smallmouth on the same 3/0 White Banger and one on a 3/0 Chartreuse Marabou Banger. While hunkering down back out of the channel to wait out a thunder storm, I saw a bowfin snooping around the shallows. Then I anchored up wind of a deep weedy dredge hole back in the marsh, waiting for the wind and drizzle to let up in order to resume taking video. I could cover this pocket in 5 cast. On the 10th cast something very big and long with sharp teeth blew up the little 3 inch 3/0 popper. I had no bite leader. I had him for 3 seconds before he cut me off.
Back drifting in the channel I went subsurface with a #4 White-Chartreuse (bead head) Jiggy. I got the last and biggest smallmouth landed for the day on that.