Matching the Hatch: The importance of knowing predator/prey relationships in Lake George
The more time I spend on the water, the more I’m drawn to details. Why were the fish up super shallow? What are they feeding on? Are they eating crawfish? How big are they and what color are they? Size and forage location is huge. So is water temperature for signaling bug hatches. I spend some of the slower time of winter processing with other fishermen what they are observing as they target some of the same fish that I target in the same bodies of water. I’m going to do a multi blog series on predator/prey relationships in some of the key bodies of water that I fish. I would love to have you leave a comment about the things you’re learning as well!
Here are my observations about Lake George:
Smelt: Last summer I saw smallmouth feeding more on smelt than I have in past summers. Some of my key spots held fish for most of the summer because the bait never moved. Lake trout love smelt, but so do smallies! I’m going to include a pic of one of the smelt that a smallie belched up while I was fishing top water.
Sculpin: Here’s one that you don’t hear a lot of people talking about. You’ll hear the Great Lakes guys talking Gobies, but not too much is said about lake fishing and sculpins. A couple years ago we were fishing perch on LG and as we were bringing the perch up they were spitting up sculpins - anywhere between 1-3” long. We were catching those fish in 45 fow. Mixed in with the perch were some nicer smallies. That summer I started fishing sculpin patterns while drop shotting smallies and we completely lit them up! Since they I buy that specific plastic 20 bags at a time. Super intrigued by a company I just got turned on to called Rabid baits. They make some hybrid plastics that are a cross between a hair jig and plastic. I bought a bunch of their goby imitations because I think they mirror a sculpin really well (check ‘em out at www.rabidbaits.com.
Crawfish: Lake George isn’t as full of crawfish as I wished. And they aren’t the massive rusty crawfish that we have back in Michigan that produce massive fish. But there are craws in LG and they tend to be more of a natural/neutral brownish color about 2ish inches long. I think that the smallies often think the hair jig is a crawfish (or a sculpin). And I think there’s times that the fish are keying in on baits presenting right on the bottom. In fact, a couple years ago we got an underwater video of a smallie going down on a ned rig and it was going to eat it, but I lifted it off bottom and the fish just lost interest.
Perch: Perch are super plentiful on Lake G…often you will see schools of thousands of perch. Many are in the 2-4” range and are perfect to be eaten by smallies and lakers a like. When I’m fishing in the middle of summer, I will often fish in and around these big schools and the smallmouth are most likely somewhere nearby. I like to use perch imitations on cranks and jerkbaits (love the Ima Flit 120 - brilliantly made baits and the colors on these are perfect for matching the hatch).
So there you have it - that’s my simple off the cuff break down of what I have experienced over the last nine years fishing the Queen. Looking forward to another summer of learning right around the corner!