Erie’s Changing Smallmouth Scene

After bass spawn on Erie, I don’t spend much time fishing shallower than 25 feet. Fishing has no absolutes, but deep-water fish are more reliable and certainly less pressured. Two good anglers can properly cover a rockpile in 15 feet of water, but fish an isolated boulder 35 feet deep in 6-foot waves, and entirely different skills and far more precision are required.

Specialized rods, line, trolling motors, and baits are needed. Until recently, the ISG Dream Tube on a 1/2-ounce jig was the only lure I used. A heavier jig would get down faster, but the 1/2-ounce is just heavy enough to reach bottom in rough conditions and harder for bass to throw.

Recently, I’ve had to rely more on drop-shot fishing, especially when the lake is calm. I believe this is due to the increase in fishing pressure on deep structure. The advent of GPS chart-plotter systems and underwater cameras means more anglers find and hit the “good spots.” And a bait like the Poor Boy’s Goby mimics the forage better than a tube, in some situations. All the big tournaments that came to Erie in 2004 were dominated by drop-shotting, and many won with the Poor Boy’s Goby.

About Gobies

The most notable behavioral change among Great Lakes smallmouths has been the shift in preferred forage, precipitated by the introduction of another exotic—the round goby. Gobies are similar to sculpins—bottom-oriented (due to lack of a swim bladder), with a preference for hard substrates and objects. Gobies first appeared on the radar of fishery biologists around 1992. Within a few years, goby numbers increased exponentially. It’s now impossible to view any rocky structure down to 40 feet in Erie with a camera without seeing gobies.

This incredibly adept fish may wreak havoc with fishery officials, but gobies are just fine where feeding bass are concerned. Gobies make up about 70 percent of the smallmouth diet here, and their abundance has led to a remarkable increase in the overall size of bass in the lake.

In short, the goby has changed the feeding habits of smallmouths. A homebody on hard structure, the goby is a reliable source of food. Bass are feeding less on shad, smelt, shiners, alewives, and lake herring, all of which suspend. Gobies stay near bottom. As a result, big bass on Erie look up less and look down more.

The fishery now centers less on drifting expansive flats—following the bait to catch bass. Instead, the current focus is precise presentations on small “spots-on-the-spot.” A powerful 36-volt trolling motor with an extra-long shaft is required to hold the boat in a key position for casting to such spots on Lake Erie. One isolated reef in 35 feet of water produced only one fish in 3 years, but it weighed 5 pounds, showing the spot’s potential. I unlocked the vault to that potential when I located the sweet spot on the structure in the summer of 2004, a spot where smallmouths stacked on a small pile of sharp rock off the edge of a break. That comparatively tiny spot-on-a-spot produced 26 bass topping 4 pounds, over the next 30 days.

Precision is the key, but to consistently produce at those depths requires harmonious use of quality depthfinders, chart plotters, trolling motors, and big-water hulls that can take on lots of water without becoming somebody else’s smallmouth structure.