Ten Tiger Night – What’s happening on Lake St Clair?
When the musky season started I had a feeling it was going to be a good year. With a warmer than normal spring, I was looking forward to opener. Fishing this year has been amazing to say the least. With high temps, lower water level, early weed growth, and low fishing pressure, the lake is setting up for high numbers. Fishing with friends it wasn’t long into the season before we had recorded multiple trips landing 10 Muskies or more.
When it comes to tigers on St.Clair during a normal season we are lucky to catch 1 tiger for every 20 naturals. This year has been a true exception – where we have been catching 1-3 tigers every trip out. That all changed last Tuesday night, after heading out for an evening fish with three buddies. Watching the radar beforehand, there was a storm front tracking from the west. So we had a game plan to run North out of the storm’s path to the middle of the lake. When we thought we had run far enough from the storm, we set down to start setting up our rods. All we could really do was set up trolling with the waves, battling 2ft Clair chop. Normally we are targeting smaller isolated deep weed beds which has worked out very good for us. When I looked at the sonar and saw nice weeds coming 5-6ft off bottom over 22ft of water I felt we had hit the jackpot.
We didn’t even get all the rods in before we heard that familiar zing of the clicker going off. By the time the 3 hr trip of chaos was over we had landed 10 tigers. We couldn’t believe what had just happened, landing 10 tiger muskies and losing several others is just plain unheard of and a true mile stone to beat. The night was filled with laughs, hugs, and high fives. The three largest fish of the evening measured 44-1/2, 46, and a 49” being my new personal best tiger. The craziest part of the whole night was that there was no natural Muskie caught, every single one was a hybrid.
Over the last four years the water has been exceptionally high on Lake St. Clair, giving the fish more area to disperse and honestly made it harder to catch Muskies. Last year we caught 15 tigers and we thought that was unbeatable. This year has been truly exceptional already landing 36 tigers so far, only being 37 days into the season. I recommend that if anybody wants to catch a tiger come to Lake St. Clair. Here you have a true shot at a giant, and just maybe you will become the first person to catch a legit 50” tiger on Lake St.Clair.
(Picture above is of me holding the 49” tiger from that night, below are of some of our most beautiful tigers from this season already)
