North & South

Sturgeon Bay in Door County, Wisconsin

A Delta notification on my phone tells me that I can check in for my flight any time. I guess that means the next trip is getting close. I'll actually drive to Atlanta early tomorrow morning to get on a plane and will do the same thing next week at about the same time. Both are fishing trips that promise great action, the chance to field test some cool gear, and many opportunities to gather photos and story material, but that's where the similarities end.

Tomorrow's travels point me north. I'm flying to Minneapolis and then connecting to Green Bay, where I'll spend three days fishing the spectacular bays that bound Door County, which is located on the peninsula between the Green Bay and Lake Michigan. We'll fish cool, clear, rocky water and target smallmouth bass, walleyes and salmon, and I suspect it will be sweatshirt weather.

Next week's air travel take me south -- way south -- with the first flight going to Dallas and the connecting flight taking me to Mazatlan, Mexico. From Mazatlan, we'll travel by van to Lake El Salto, where big largemouth bass will be the lone target. We'll work timber and vegetation with big lures, and light fishing clothes will be the order of the day. I'll go with sleeves and long pants, but only for the sake of sun protection.

Today's work is a mixed bag of wrapping up writing projects, packing, banking, charging batteries, clearing memory cards and doing the other stuff that will make me ready for travel. Hopefully I'll get to bed at a good time, because the 2:30 a.m. alarm is going to seem pretty early!

Round 1 to the Fish

Well, the fish won today. With everything way behind (here, like most places) and most water in Sturgeon Bay hovering close to 40 degree, the fish simply hadn't moved up even to the places where they normally show up first and typically are already using when Wisconsin's bass season opens.

Although the fish didn't cooperate, I had a great time running about the bay and learning about it and am very appreciative of Chris Johnson and Doug McDonald, who hit it hard, covering a lot of water, trying a lot of stuff and teaching me a bunch. Both grew up in Door County, and they have been friends since sixth grade and tournament partners for nearly 25 years. For me it was a fun day of learning about a beautiful area and about the bass fishery that Bassmaster just named No. 1 in the nation. And despite the fish not showing themselves today, I know the fishery truly is world-class.

Tomorrow our smallmouth quest goes a few miles south to the Fox River, which feeds the Bay of Green Bay close to the city of Green Bay. I'll keep you posted when I can!

Tour De Bronze 2014

Well, my big bronze trip begins tomorrow, when I board a plane to fly from Atlanta to Green Bay. Travel actually includes two trips in one. After arriving in Green Bay, I'll spend three days fishing Sturgeon Bay and the other bays that bound Door County, Wisconsin. From Green Bay, I fly directly to Buffalo, to fish for more big smallmouths in Lake Erie's eastern basin and to fish for a mix of species (including smallmouths) in the Lower Niagara River and Lake Ontario.

The Sturgeon Bay area, the Buffalo area of Erie and the mouth of the Niagara clearly rank among the finest trophy smallmouth waters in the world, and the first days after they open typically are among the very best for catching the most and the biggest fish. Fishing is still fishing, so it may not happen, but if the weather allows us good approaches to the best waters, chances of tangling with seriously big smallmouth bass are about as good as I could ask for.

At Sturgeon Bay, I think we'll be fishing with Tubes and other Get Bit Baits soft-plastic offerings, plus some hair jigs custom tied specifically for the early-season bite. At Erie, tubes, live shiners and jerkbaits could all play a role.

Of course this trip isn't all about bronze. I'll also be spending time on the Lower Niagara River fishing for steelhead, salmon and lakers, But maybe that's another story for another time.

Ice Out?

Earlier this year I was watching weather in the North, pulling for serious cold to lock up good ice for my January trip western Pennsylvania. A few months later I'm thinking about northern weather and ice again, but this time I'm pulling for the opposite. On Friday, I fly to Green Bay to fish for giant smallmouths in the legendary waters that bound Door County with the folks from Get Bit Baits, but as of a couple of days ago, a couple of the bays we would most likely fish still had ice on them. They are starting to break up. so hopefully by the time we're ready to fish...

The good news is that some bays are open and -- worst case -- we could fish in rivers that supposedly are loaded with 3- to 5-pound smallmouths!

From Green Bay I fly Buffalo to fish Erie and the Niagara River and apparently Erie's Eastern Basin still has ice on it, too, but those waters have a few more days to thaw before I arrive, so I feel pretty confident that we'll be in good shape there. And if we could only fish the river, which is full of brown trout, steelhead, lake trout and salmon, that wouldn't be the worst thing that's ever happened.

There's nothing I can do about any of that anyway, so I'll just pack plenty of warm clothes and be prepared for whatever happens!

Swimmingly Simple & Seriously Fun

Sure, retrieve speed makes a difference, and long, well-directed casts improve your total numbers most days. Still, there isn't a much more basic approach to catching fish than casting a Kalin's Lunker Grub with a spinning outfit and winding it back slowly and steadily. In fact, when you're swimming Kalin's Grubs though the legendary smallmouth waters that surround Door County, Wisconsin, the most difficult thing is landing the decidedly mean smallmouth bass that are going to attack your grub.

Despite an accurate day 1 forecast of "winds 25 to 35 MPH with gusts over 40" on my recent trip to Door County, we were able to catch some fish while drifting and dancing across big waves in broad bays and to find and catch a bunch more that were piled up in protected canals. Day 2 brought calmer seas and allowed us to work bigger areas with our grubs and to see more of the area's beautiful shoreline. Although I never caught any of the giant fish that sometimes show up in and around Sturgeon Bay, I caught between 30 and 40 smallmouths on the second day, and my best five would have weighed close to 20 pounds without a "kicker" in the mix.

We mostly fished our grubs on 1/8-ounce Spot Stalker jigheads, fished on 8-pound fluorocarbon (or light braid with a fluoro leader), and medium action Denali Rosewood Shadow Series spinning rods. A few fish hit savagely. Most were just there. One minute you'd be reeling in a grub. The next minute you'd be setting the hook into a smallmouth that was suddenly on your line.

It was my first trip to Door County, but I think it's safe to say that it won't be my last!