SEAN OSTRUSZKA, Social Media Liaison

Throughout the season, MuskyHunter.com will check in with guides and anglers around the country to see where the bite is on fire. Hence the name of the section: Hot Bite. If there is a hot bite on the waters you fish, contact Sean Ostruszka at spostruszka43@hotmail.com.

Normally, we talk to guides to try and find the hottest bites, but the pattern Chicagoland anglers Nick Ellis and Steve Cleinmark have been on at Lake St. Clair may be the hottest bite we’ve heard all season.

The two, along with a few friends, have made the drive out to St. Clair for a pair of two-day trips the last two weekends. The results: 29 muskies up to 52 inches, another 12 lost and far too many follows to count.

“It’s just been crazy,” Ellis says.

The two put together a pattern out in front of a river mouth on the east shoreline. Fishing a mud flat with scattered weeds, they noticed the water there was a brown or cloudy green color, and there were chopped up weeds everywhere that would get on their lures every cast. There also happened to be a massive amount of baitfish in amongst the chopped-up vegetation.

“When you saw bait flickering on the surface, scattering during casts or showing up on the electronics, you could almost guarantee to catch a fish,” Ellis said.

The two anglers are big jerkbait fishermen, so they opted to try throwing “pounder” Musky Innovations Bulldawgs. While the lures would guarantee snagging weeds every cast, it didn’t seem to matter for the muskies. The only thing that mattered was color, as Bulldawgs with orange tails or all silver seemed to out perform other colors.

As for how they worked the lures, it was all casting, with the normal retrieve been steady pulls with quick pops upward.

“We noticed that we had a lot of fish eat when we popped the lure toward the surface in the figure eight, so we tried to do that during the cast,” Ellis said. “We ended up catching a lot of fish that way.”

“One other weird thing was that we also caught fish straight cranking the Bulldawgs, too.”

Luckily, the guys always wear GoPro cameras, so you can watch some of their catches on YouTube under Ellis’ name, Musky Nick.