On the Great Lakes, using goby-imitating baits for smallmouth bass is now as standard as tossing crawfish patterns on other lakes. A few years ago on Lake Michigan, I started catching brown trout mixed in with smallmouths on goby presentations. At first it was just one trout here and there. But when I started catching more browns than smallmouths, I knew it was no accident. These big football browns also were getting fat and sassy on their goby diet.

The round goby is the latest foreign fish to invade the Great Lakes. It now has spread to all the Great Lakes since its first sighting in the St. Clair River in 1990. In the past seven or eight years, this ballast-water transplant from the Black and Caspian seas of Eastern Europe has been connected to numerous ecosystem imbalances.

A thread of silver lining in this black cloud has been the development of the goby-smallmouth connection. In rocky and other hard-bottom areas, these 2- to 4-inch, blunt-headed, bug-eyed beauties pepper the bottom in large numbers. Gobies weren’t shy about moving into smallmouth habitat and smallmouths weren’t shy about feeding on this easy and plentiful target. It didn’t take long for lure manufacturers to take notice; numerous goby-patterned crankbaits, jigs, and softbaits have taken the market by storm.

In 2004 and 2005, the overall size and weight of Lake Michigan’s chinook and coho salmon were down. The reason was speculated to be a temporary reduction in the alewife population. Meanwhile in those years, the browns flourished, getting heavier and heavier.

Not only were brown trout adapting to the new forage, they were thriving. In the spring of 2007, Wisconsin DNR biologists analyzed the stomach contents of brown trout. They found gobies. Loads of gobies. Stomachs packed with gobies.

For the past several years, I’ve focused my presentations on a goby forage pattern and I’ve connected with more and bigger browns. Many times I have found success when traditional Great Lakes tactics weren’t getting even a sniff. The nearshore goby-trout pattern starts around mid-April and gets stronger as the water warms.  It holds together through part of fall but as October rolls around, nearshore browns are primarily spawners and they aren’t interested in feeding.

Goby Behavior

Although I’ve studied many articles about the habits of gobies in the Great Lakes, my most valuable findings have been personal observations. I’ve learned a few lessons by watching their behavior with an Aqua-Vu underwater camera.

Gobies love rocks, any rocks, from marble-size pebbles to refrigerator-sized boulders. I rarely see them on clean sandy or silty bottoms. They also favor zebra mussel colonies, both for cover and for food. They hang tight to cover—rarely do they roam open-water areas with no bottom cover. But get near cover such as rocks, a seawall, or a breakwall, and the bottom becomes carpeted with gobies.

Gobies never seem to leave the bottom. I haven’t seen one venture more than 18 inches off bottom. They don’t have a swim bladder so they essentially sink without fin propulsion. As fry or fingerlings, they’ve been observed to travel to the surface at night (perhaps in currents, probably how they get into ballast water), but for the rest of their life they appear to be bottom-dwellers.

They sit on bottom and dart from 1 to 6 feet before landing abruptly back on bottom. Their movement almost resembles a hop more than a swimming fish. They have almost no tail action and most of their movement appears to be propelled by their oversized pectoral fins.

Gobies seem to show up nearshore in numbers as soon as the water temperatures reach the mid-40ºF range, which here on Lake Michigan occurs around mid-April. Their numbers grow as the nearshore waters warm, and start to fall off around October. During the winter months they move deeper offshore, although they also can be found in warm-water areas such as power plant discharges.

Location

I came across this pattern while smallmouth fishing. When we get onshore winds in the summer months, the water warms and the trout and salmon move offshore. I enjoyed good smallmouth action until a couple days of westerly wind brought in a cold upwelling. Smallmouths evacuated, but browns stayed in the deep areas of harbors even when water temps got to 65ºF or 66ºF, likely because they can tolerate a bit higher temperatures than the other salmonids. Only when the water temperatures exceeded 66ºF did browns disappear. Despite the plentiful forage, there comes a time when they can’t handle it.

The best spots to find congregating brown trout are where gobies are most plentiful. These are similar to the spots where you’d find goby-eating smallmouths, such as nearshore or shoreline spots, but it’s not an offshore bite. Check the base of seawalls, the deep edges of rubble breakwalls, or shallow reef or rockpiles. In most cases, you won’t find action till you work within 15 feet of the structure.

Some spots require a boat but most can be fished from shore. When browns are feeding along the deep edge of a harbor seawall, you can fish it more effectively from shore. Don’t waste time making long casts. Work baits close to shoreline structure. If possible, make casts tight and parallel to the breakwall or seawall.

A boat may be necessary to explore a harbor rockpile or nearshore reef. Start before sunrise by checking the top of the reef, working baits down the slope. But as soon as the sun comes up, focus your attention on the deepest edge or base of the rockpile.

Presentation

Many of the goby imitations used for smallmouths double for browns. From watching gobies, I saw that browns feeding on them never ventured far from the bottom. Despite great goby-colored crankbaits, they just didn’t stay deep long enough on a cast to be effective. Jigs and the Carolina rig are without a doubt the most efficient presentations.

Soft-plastic goby imitators rigged on a 1/8- to 1/4-ounce jighead work well. Zoom’s Fluke in watermelon-pepper and Lunker City’s 4-inch Fin-S Fish in watermelon seed and golden shiner also are excellent choices. On these fluke-type baits, rig them sideways or “Stange style,” to get a better glide. Berkley’s new Gulp! Goby is another one to experiment with on jigheads.

Some of my best producers are hair jigs I tie myself. The natural breathing action of the hackle, marabou, and deer hair add a subtle degree of life that plastics can’t match. In clear-water situations, I stick with hair. Jigs tied in hues of olive, brown, and natural deer with a touch of gold flash resemble gobies well.

Tube jigs were the first good goby imitator used by Great Lakes smallmouth fishermen, and they also work well for browns. Berkley’s original Power Tube is a good option. Team tubes with a quality 1/8- to 1/4-ounce tube jig. Another bait to try is the Berkley Sparkle Power Tube Minnow. This is In-Fisherman Editor In Chief Doug Stange’s favorite all-around tube—he finds it a hot bait for goby-eating smallmouths and likes the Pearl Blue Shad and Emerald Shiner colors.

Tubes fished weightless on a Carolina rig can be deadly, too. I generally use a 1/2-ounce egg or bullet sinker, a #7 Crane swivel, and a 3-foot section of 10-pound fluorocarbon leader. Use the typical extra-wide gap (EWG) hook or something like Gamakatsu’s Skip-Gap hook. Carolina rigs take a beating from rocks and zebra mussels so retie often. A 4-inch piece of clear, flexible tubing ahead of your slipsinker helps prevent abrasions. I buy air-line hose from the aquariu m store for about $2 for 15 feet. I pour my own bullet sinkers, and the hose slips over the nose of the sinker. I put a dab of super glue on the parts before I slip them together.

Retrieves should closely resemble the natural swimming pattern of a goby. An easy lift-drop is better than aggressive jigging. Gobies pop up off the bottom, glide, and settle back down. I’ve found that this retrieve is best done using only the reel. Cast out the jig or Carolina rig and let it settle to the bottom. Point the rod at the lure and crank two to four turns. Now, watch the line. Strikes occur as bait settles back to the bottom. With the rod tip pointed at the bait, I’m in a perfect position for a quick hook-set.

The biggest difference in fishing this system for smallmouths and brown trout is size of the fish. A good smallmouth is 5 pounds. A good brown is 25 pounds. But, brown trout aren’t dumb and they’re wary, so beefing up the tackle isn’t an option. I use 8-pound Silver Thread Excalibur and 10-pound Stren Magnathin lines. Smooth drags are a must. For jig fishing, I like a 71⁄2-foot extra-fast-action rod. For lobbing Carolina rigs, I have a 101⁄2-foot moderate-action float rod that works great.

When it comes to gobies, Lake Michigan brown trout have taken lemons and made lemonade. Chinooks, coho, and steelhead haven’t adapted to the new food source. Neither have some anglers, who continue to work spoons and crankbaits well above the feeding zone of these goby-gorging browns. For those willing to probe bottom, enormous football browns await.

*Marc Wisniewski is an outdoor writer and lure manufacturer from Greenfield, Wisconsin.