TBBA Qualifier #2 Lake St Clair

Well, Finally got the chance to really get out and find some fish on Lake St Clair (had a tournament so I kind of had to LOL). My season so far has been far too busy to really get out fishing at all. After 2 days spent basically eliminating most of our tournament water my partner, myself and a friend hit the water Saturday to hit the remaining water I hadn't touched yet. We left an area we fished last year for last and what do you know, it was pretty much the only area holding quality fish. We identified 2 very good areas to cover on tournament day. Pre-fishing Saturday we were on a tube a drop shot pattern. Misty Craw, Purple Smoke Pearl, JC Goby Ice, River Rat and a one off Smoke/Purple/Gold Kill Shot's were our go to drop shot baits, River Rat, St Clair Goby and Misty Craw tubes were the ticket that same day as well. The morning of the tournament we made our big run and saw half the field fishing the same areas. We dropped in on a line that was clear of any boats and I grabbed my DX743SF Dobyns spinning rod with a 3.5" River Rat Sniper Shad on it and set the hook into a giant on the first cast. Huge head shakes and a ton of weight had my heart racing and then the last thing you would ever want to happen during a tournament.....POP, the hook came loose near the boat. on the off chance I didn't get the hook in (I found that the bigger fish have an iron jaw this year and its hard to actually get the hook in them) Jeff tossed a drop shot back to it, he set the hook and yells it's on!!!!! His rod was doubled over and yet again, POP. Frustrated with loosing the same fish twice we just continued to fish. We started noticing a lot of the boats taking off, the key to the area we were fishing was to cover as much water as possible as these fish were scattered everywhere. I stuck with fishing our 3.5" Sniper Shad on a 1/2oz football head all day while Jeff bounced between a drop shot and jerk bait. When it came time to leave we made our final cull guessing we might have 17lbs if we were lucky. Back at the launch we grabbed our fish tossed them in a weigh bag and headed to the scales. Within seconds we saw the numbers land on 18.26lbs, my largest tournament weight on Lake St Clair. It was good enough for a 14th place finish out of the 69 boat field. We had a great day on the water with very little dead time and lots of fish all day. The winning bag was caught very close to us and came in at almost 24lbs.