I love catching largemouth bass, and up until now, that has been my focus on the 2015 Bassmaster Elite Series. But that’s going to change soon because two of the last three regular-season events — Lake St. Clair and the 1000 Islands — will be held on some of the nation’s top smallmouth waters.
That’s exciting for me because I don’t get the chance to fish major smallmouth fisheries that often, so I look forward to these opportunities. We have smallmouth in my home waters on Lake Ten Killer — but they’re just now getting to where you can target them. It used to be that it was an accident if you went out and caught a smallmouth, but now, I can literally go out and target smallmouth.
A lot of understanding these fish just comes through experience fishing them. I didn’t really start smallmouth fishing until about six years ago when I started fishing professionally.
I grew up in the South, so I was always a largemouth fisherman. This smallmouth deal is kind of new to me. I think the biggest difference is that smallmouth tend to roam a lot more. You might pull up to a rock and catch the heck out of them one day and come back the next day and realize they’ve just vanished.
Largemouth bass tend to hang around a lot more than smallmouth bass do. Smallmouth just aren’t the home bodies that largemouth are. Because of this, you want to cover as much water as you can. If you’re not getting a bite, it’s not necessarily that they’re not biting – they’re just not feeding.
One of the things I like most is I think that they’re visual eaters. And the way that they never give up is what I like about them most.
I also like that you can power fish smallmouth. The only thing is that they’re here today and gone tomorrow. Personally, I’ve had a lot of times where I located a good school of smallmouth and then I go back and they’re nowhere to be found.
Everybody’s going to face the same challenges, but if you can get on the smallmouth, chances are they’re going to bite. I’ll make my tournament decisions based on what I see in practice, but going into the Lake St. Clair and St. Lawrence River events, I’ll have a general game plan off what I plan to throw.
Drop shot: I like a 3/8- to 1/2-ounce weight and a YUM Kill Shot on a No. 2 Trokar Dropshot hook. Up north, a lot of the bait is smaller, like 3 to 4 inches long, so I want something small and compact, but also something soft so I can get my hook through it.
Because smallmouth are sight feeders, I have a few particular colors I like. I want something that looks alive, so I’ll go with I’ll go with natural colors (goby and perch colors like green pumpkin, green pumpkin purple).
I like to nose hook my bait for a couple of reasons. First, when you get into St. Clair, Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence River, there’s not a lot of brush or stumps to snag. And from an efficiency perspective, I like the nose hooking because it gives the bait more action and gives me better hook ups.
As far as where I’d fish a drop shot, I’d look for current-related spots. On St. Clair and Erie, it will be isolated rocks, irregularities in the sand or anything different where the fish might gang up.
Topwater: My top choice here would be a One Knocker Spook in the lemon shad color, and I’d throw it over irregularities, current seams, grass — something a little different.
It’s not usually possible to win a Bassmaster Elite Series tournament solely on a topwater, but there will be a couple of slick calm days when it’s hard to get on top of those fish with the boat. You can pick up a spook and catch a few key fish — maybe two or three one day, or every day.
Usually, the topwater fish tend to run a little bigger, so this can play an important role on a smallmouth fishery. It’s an aggressive bite and you can draw them up from 10 to 15 feet.
I think some of it is a feeding bite, but a lot of them are just reaction bites — they just want to kill something.
I always have a spook on my deck when I’m smallmouth fishing. You might be sitting there drop shot fishing and all of a sudden there’s a big one out there 50 yards. I you get that Spook somewhere around that fish while he’s still up on top, you’re going to get a bite.
Spinnerbait: For those smallmouth, I’ll go with a 3/4-ounce Booyah spinnerbait.
A lot of times I’ll use that bait during practice to cover a lot of water. You could potentially get a lot bites, but you’ll also get a lot of followers that don’t bite. This bait just tells you about the area’s potential.
I prefer gold or silver willow leaf blades most of the time, but the painted chartreuse blades are good in cloudy conditions.
I’ll use a 7.5:1 Lew’s Team Light reel and throw it 50 to 60 yards to cover some water. That’s what I like about a spinnerbait: the efficiency. You don’t cover 5 yards at a time, you cover 15 at a time.
I may go back in the tournament and catch them on a drop shot or a tube, but the spinnerbait shows me what lives there.
One more thing that differentiates smallmouth and largemouth is that when I find them, I’ll rarely worry about “managing” the school. Put it this way, if I’m managing smallmouth, then I have a giant stringer for the day.
With a wind or weather change, I’ve seen them move a lot. So, if I get them located for a day, I’ll try to catch all I can because they might not be there tomorrow.
