Jim Horn is one of those guys who fishes five or six days a week. He mostly fishes for bass, but he’s not about to pass up a hot bite if something else is happening. I’ve fished with him two or three days a year over the last 30 years, and, more often than not, it’s for bass. And more often than not, it’s on the St. Joseph River. So when he called me and said they were biting pretty well on the St. Joe, and did I want to go, how could I pass it up?
Jim Horn loves fishing the St. Joe and he knows how, where and when to catch fish on it!
We fished the stretch downstream from the Berrien Springs, the last dam before the river hits the big lake. And over the course of the eight hours we spent on the water, we covered about half the 17 miles from the dam to Lake Michigan (roughly the middle section of the stretch). We rang ‘em up. We weren’t counting (except for keepers, of which we had 12) and when I asked him how many we caught, he said he really didn’t know, but he figured we caught at least five shorts for every keeper. Do the math: that’s 72—one largemouth and the rest smallies.
And that’s just part of it; Horn caught a ginormous channel cat (I figured it was at least 10 pounds) and a big dogfish; we caught three walleyes (two on crankbaits and one on a tube) as well a couple of handfuls of rock bass. And that’s part of what Horn likes about the river—you never know what you’re going to catch.
“It seems like you catch a lot of variety,” Horn said as we threw crankbaits, topwaters (Pop Rs and Zara Spooks), tubes and Ned Rigs and caught fish on all of them. “I’ve only ever caught one white bass here, but you catch both bass species, rock bass, crappies, two different kinds of catfish (the Joe is noted for its flathead fishing), and the other day I even caught a bullhead. I’ve caught a few muskies. If the bass aren’t happening, you can do something else.”
But it isn’t just the variety of fish that appeals to him; it’s the variety of ways you can catch them.
“I like the options of the various patterns,” Horn said. “Are they on wood or they on rock? Are they on the bank or out in the current or on the edge of the channel? There’s a lot more variety of patterns. On the lake, you might have one or two patterns going, but how many places on a lake can you duplicate that pattern? On the river, there’s miles and miles of all kinds of water and if you get a pattern going, you can find a lot of places that have the same kind of water.”
Horn figures at least 50 percent of his fishing in recent years has been on the St. Joe. “I like to move around, but if I get them going good, I’ll go six or eight times in a row on the river. I fished it all the way up to Three Rivers. I’ve even fished some Indiana stretches. Each stretch has its own characteristics. The Niles stretch seems to have the most pike and the best average size of pike. The Buchanan stretch is closest to home, but that stretch is more like a reservoir, so you fish it differently. But the lower stretch is my favorite. I’ve fished it all the way to Lake Michigan and I catch bigger ones down there.
Our day started slowly: we caught fish right away, but most of them were undersized. We probably boated a dozen smallmouth, ranging from dinks to just shorts, before we landed our first keeper. Horn said there are a lot of small fish this year.
“They must have had a pretty good spawn two or three years ago,” he said. “It’s been more usual to catch a lot of smaller fish this year than in recent years. But I usually catch a better average-size fish than we’re catching today.”
Still, we figured our best five would go 15 pounds, which, as often as not, would win the tournament on any given day.
“But you could catch a 20-pound bag just as easily,” Horn said. “My best bag ever was 23 pounds. But I won a tournament a couple of years back with three fish that weighed five pounds. That’s fishing.”
One very pleasant feature of the St. Joe is you never hear it mentioned as one of the best bass fisheries in Michigan. So you don’t have to be concerned about crowding.
“The majority of the time, you don’t have to worry about the boat traffic,” Horn said. “You run into a few guys who are walleye fishing, but most of the guys you run into below Berrien Springs are steelheaders, so they’re not really bothering your fish.”
Indeed, the steelhead fishing in winter and spring can be very good, but you never know when you’ll run into them. I caught my first-ever summer-run steelhead on the Joe, while bass fishing, running a spinnerbait through a submerged tree top on a hot August day. And the catfishing is very good, too, for both channel cats and flatheads. I caught my best-ever flathead there, a 29-pounder, fishing cut bait at night. But I’ve had my most unusual experiences there walleye fishing, catching a number of lake trout while jigging for walleyes just below the Berrien Springs dam. And one Christmas Eve, I caught five Coho salmon while fishing a jig and minnow in what is known as a pretty good walleye stretch, about halfway between the dam and the lake.
But it’s the bass fishing that flips Horn’s switch.
“The topwater bite lasts longer,” he said. “You can catch them first things in the morning on top, but you can always find some shade to fish and the topwater bite keeps going. And I love fishing smallies on topwaters.”
