Cold water smallies?

[bassfshin24]

So I'm going to be heading up to Mille Lacs this weekend and am wondering how I should approach the bite. It looks like the water temps are going to be in the mid to upper 40's. What depths would you be looking for and what baits would you be tossing at them?

[Cecil]

Weather pending, Deitz and I may be up there as well. Jerkbaits, cranks and tubes just off the break will be the starting areas.

[bassfshin24]

You going to be heading out of Isle Cecil? I'm guessing that's where I'll be headed. When you are talking breaks...how deep are you looking? There are so many rock bars out there that come up into 2-4ft and on the edges are 6-8ft. Or are you going to be looking at rocks in 8ft that break into 10-12ft? I've been on mille lacs a ton but never really fished it when the water has been this cold.

[Cecil]

My fish house is by cove, so either cove or isle yeah. I usually dont want to be able to see the rocks im casting at this time of year. So, I would say that 10' range is safe. I'm guessing the cooler weather will keep them off the tops of the reefs. But, you never know!

[bassfshin24]

Thanks for the info Cecil!

[Juan Grande]

Doug Stange (In-Fisherman) catches them by snap jigging spoons this time of year on Mille Lacs. Not sure what type of areas he's fishing, but based on the article, you just cast as far as you can and agressively work the spoon back to the boat. Jerk it up and just before it hits the bottom you jerk it again. I'm thinking he's probably fishing large flats adjacent to drop offs.

[Cecil]

We'll let you know if we head up there...

[Presco]

I was up there two years ago in late Sept (similar temps to now) and we were mostly working the breaks in 6-12 FOW. We were using tubes the whole day and working them really slow. Like Cecil said, we'd find the rock humps and then cast to them from deeper water.

The guy we were with went out two days later and he found them bunched up in 20-25 FOW off the rock humps. He just kept pushing deeper until he found them.

[bassfshin24]

When you guys are out working the breaks are you looking for fish on your graph or are you casting until you find some? I struggle on mille lacs a lot and i think it has to do with me not reading my graph enough and spending to much time power fishing with cranks and spinnerbaits.

Presco: I just tried to send you a PM but your mailbox is full. I have a couple of questions for ya.

[CCGinMN]

I was out there this past Sat. (at the end of a major front) and NOTHING was going on. I mainly threw tub jigs in water down to 12' deep. I dunno, maybe I should have tried deeper. I also tried some jerkbaits in the 3 - 6' range. I couldn't get out of Waukon bay and over to my normal spots because of the 3' waves. Still better than sitting at home... Good luck and report back!!

[Juan Grande]

I would think fish being caught in 20-25' are in their wintering holes already.

[RawHog]

In my experience in the fall, when its sunny like its supposed to be this friday, they stack up on shallow rocks. Depending on cloud cover and what day(s) you're fishing, I would start on the break then move either shallower or deeper.

[Presco]

Messages deleted. Stupid message quota.

[RawHog]

Messages deleted. Stupid message quota.

Instead of insulting people, respectfully correct people you "feel" or "know" are giving false information..... Just trying to help Bassin24.

[Cecil]

I dont think he was insulting anyone....

[bassfshin24]

He wasn't insulting anyone...he was just saying the PM message quota of 20 is stupid...no worries though

[RawHog]

Oh my bad guys, I noticed that almost as soon as I submitted it..oops. But I thought he was possibly insulting me for saying it might be worth while to check shallow. I know the common idea is that in the fall, smallmouth are a "deep water fish" but I don't think that is always the case. Bluebird skies and sun can push them onto shallow rocks ( I think). Give it a try maybe and let us know how you do.

This topic especially intrigues me because I'll be in/near Dalton MN, (splits the distance on 94 between Alex and Fergus falls) chasing smallies on a 1500 acre body of water. The lake maxes out at 50 ft I believe, and there is one very distinct and sharp hump made of rock smack dab in the middle of the lake. I'll be working the top with poppers and lipless cranks. If that fails I'm going to move to the break and use tube jigs,lipless cranks, and bass jigs.

[tonkapat]

What line are you guys using when fishing tube jigs. I haven't found anything that will take much abuse from the zebra mussels.

[kt]

I've never fished mille lacs, but i typically do pretty well on smallies in the fall on a couple highly pressured smallie waters up where i live. On these lakes I usually target three different areas in the fall.

First of all, I love fishing steep drops off of major pieces of structure with boulder/weed transitions on or near the break itself. These types of spots can be jackpots, with lots of fish in a small area. On the lakes I fish, these areas typically fall in the 8-12 foot zone. Secondly, I like to target sand/gravel flats with scattered weed clumps and boulders. In this type of area its usually more of a run and gun approach where you come across a wolfpack of smallies relating to the boulders or weed clumps. If you catch one, work the area hard and don't be afraid to change baits in the same area. This past weekend with water temps in the upper 40's we caught lots of smallies on these types of flats throwing grubs, spinnerbaits, and shallow cranks. They wouldn't touch a tube oddly enough. The third area I like to target in the fall is the sides and sometimes tops of small isolated humps with either weeds, rocks, or both on them. Sometimes these humps top off in 6 feet sometimes they top off in 18+ feet.

The key for me in the fall is to be versatile. Cover lots of different types of areas, with lots of different types of baits. Sometimes they won't touch a tube but they will hammer a crankbait, sometimes they won't touch a grub but they will crush a jerkbait, and sometimes its just a matter of getting one fish to bite. If you do catch one pay close attention to what you were doing, where you were, and exactly what that fish was positioned on.

[ssaamm]

Just got back from NE SoDak. We caught all of our smallies on DT-10's off the weedline in 10-12 FOW in 48 degree water. No luck on plastics, but the wind made it tough.

[smalliehunter]

I was up north of Brainerd last weekend and found my biggest smallmouths came from 16 to 20 foot with rocks.

[RumRiverRat]

Read the article about Ripping Lipless Cranks in one of the recent in fishermans.

I was on Lake Pepin on Tuesday and fished riprap banks with 20 to 35 foot of water near by, using the technique Doug Stange talks about.

2 of us put 40 Smallmouth in the boat in 8 hours of fishing.

The same technique we used is what Stange discovered on Mille Lacs in 2010.

We tried Spoons with a little success.

1/2oz Ripping Raps and doing exactly what Stange does will put fish in the boat.

[RumRiverRat]

Quote:

Calculated Magic

Even though I have seen it so often over so many years, I still find it remarkable that seemingly small things can be so critical in finally getting fish to bite. One moment there are no fish (for all practical purposes), the next, with just a lure tweak here, a lure change there, or a modest technique modification like a slight change in retrieve, the fish are all over you––they're everywhere and they're big to boot. It's calculated magic-but, as we all know, until it falls into place, it's a puzzle.

I recently mentioned experimenting for two years with casting spoons for smallmouth bass, before finally getting it right, during at least one yearly period. Now it remains for me (and perhaps you) to try it during seasons besides fall. I'm thinking the method probably works at times all summer, too, when smallmouths are holding in water about 8 to 30 feet deep.

I've mostly been using the 5/8-ounce Luhr-Jensen Tony Spoon, which I call a paranormal smallmouth spoon because it looks more like a traditional option for pike. Slab spoon and vertical jigging this isn't. I'm casting and retrieving, which calls for a bit of a different spoon design.

Coupled with a 10- or 14-pound fused line and a medium-action 7-foot casting or spinning outfit I can make gigantic casts, so this is a method that covers a lot of water. Let the spoon drop on a semi-slack line. Once it hits bottom, the line goes slack and you give the rod tip a sharp upward lift of about 3 feet, then let the spoon fall again on a semi-slack line back to the bottom, following it with your rod tip and reeling as it drops.

This gives the spoon an intense wobble-flash action on the upswing, and an erratic knuckle-ball-like action on the fall, as you can't control exactly how the spoon moves as it drops back. The retrieve is a constant rip-fall, rip-fall, with the angler watching line on the drop back for a telltale tic. Other times the fish is just there on the next up-stroke and you don't see or feel your line move.

You catch a lot of pike, walleyes, and largemouths fishing spoons like this too. With those fish, you often see or feel a tic in the line as they take, because much of the time they're hitting the spoon on the drop. Smaller smallmouths do that a lot too. And that was the trouble with my experimentation. I was catching decent smallmouths, but never anything exceptional.

The transformation came in reconsidering the nature of the smallmouth and in changing the retrieve process. As we have long taught, understanding the nature of the fish species being pursued is fundamental to finding and catching fish, but the presentation process––finding just the right combination of rod, reel, and line, and then just the right lure for the situation, working it in just the right way, is what finally puts fish in the boat or on the bank.

The smallmouth is one of the most discriminating and discerning and intelligent of all our fish––and, perhaps as a matter of having such street smarts, it's also perhaps the single most curious fish in freshwater. Those characteristics intensify in older, often larger smallmouths. They've been around a long time. As I said: street smarts.

Where smallmouths are concerned, retrieves often need to be just erratic enough to be highly curious––yet still just barely catchable. Said another way: The retrieve shouldn't be so predictable that it's identifiable. Curious. Not quite identifiable––yet at the same time at some point barely catchable.

So instead of slowing down in the cold-water situation I did the opposite. As soon as the spoon touched down, I ripped it back up as hard as I could. I concentrated entirely on ripping the spoon up again within a nanosecond of it touching down, time after time after time, all the way though the retrieve until it was about 50 feet from the boat, which is about when the retrieve becomes too vertical to work well.

Time after time the fish were just there on the up-rip. And big fish, not just the run of the mill fish, although smaller fish were biting too. So it was the retrieve coupled with the nature of the fish that got them going. The fish were chasing, chasing, chasing, never quite able to get a handle on what the thing was, until finally––finally––they took a shot at pinning the thing on the bottom. The key was driving them crazy with the retrieve until they couldn't stand it. I don't know how far some of the fish might follow before they take a crack at the spoon. After several days on the water I could at times begin to tell I'd soon get hit, because I could feel fish swimming by and missing––or just touching the line as they swam by, trying to get a handle on what this thing was.

This is the part of what each In-Fisherman issue is about––lessons in the process I just outlined. Many of the strategies we write about step far beyond current tradition. Other times, the strategies are but a slight modification of current trends as it unfolds. Whatever it takes. It's calculated magic.

[Presco]

RawHog, sorry for the confusion. I wasn't talking to you. Annoyed that the message quota is so small on the site. I would never talk down to someone giving advise.

[Juan Grande]

Yep, that technique Rum is talking about is the same one I was referring to. He just used lipless cranks instead of spoons.