Small Mouth Baits!!!

[bassNspear]

As we all know, its that time of year where the fishing starts to turn off the rock days of summer.

So the Question that i have for all you monster smallie fisherman, is this.

What are the best baits this time of the year for small mouth?

[st.crioxfishin]

"fishing starts to turn off the rock days of summer"

what does that mean?

[HellaBass]

Yellow Magic Popper

[AaronM]

Get yourself some tubes..they've caught so many fish this summer for me, it's crazy I've never used them before this.

[bassNspear]

are you texas rigging them or how are you presenting them

[AaronM]

Use them with a tube jig, twitching them on your retrieve is deadly.

[Mark Christianson]

Senko style baits. Period!

[RK]

Hiya -

Oh Lord... Smallies this time of year can be a pain in the rump to pin down, in lakes at least. What bait totally depends on where the fish are...

This applies to lakes more than rivers, but: First off, fish on structure.... I wouldn't say that the rock bite 'turns off' really. A lot of the time from mid-summer into early fall things do move deeper though. Instead of 3-6 feet and the tops of reefs or points being sort of the focal point, things slide off to the side a little bit, and you find more fish in the 10-15 foot range. On clear lakes, it can be 20 feet or more. On the lakes I fish a lot, this started happening probably 2-3 weeks ago. You can still get daily movement of groups of fish up shallow, but it's a lot more dependant on conditions - early morning or late evening, or when the weather's 'right.' (Now, if I could only figure out what the 'right weather' is consistently... )

When fish move off the shallow stuff, at least on the lakes I'm on, they'll move to deeper rock edges (often just off the side of where they'd been all summer - smallies are real homebodies, and they usually don't go far.) Sometimes if can be deeper edges where rock transitions to sand or gravel, or the steepest breaks off the edges of shallow rock. When they move off, they can get REALLY picky about where they want to be. Last weekend, for example, I found them around the clumps of the largest boulders near the steepest breaks. I could fish 50 yards of breakline and not get bit, then catch 10 in one 10 yard stretch where the boulders were bigger... This weekend they may be (probably will be in fact) somewhere totally different.

They can also tend to scatter a little more on deeper breaks. Instead of big schools, you find smaller pods of fish tucked here and there along deeper flats or edges (kind of the opposite of what I think LMB seem to do this time of year, oddly enough). I look for little shelves on deep rock breaks, bigger piles of boulders, spots where bottom transitions come closer the the deep edge of the rocks, or spots where the bottom transition is different - boulders to gravel vs boulders to sand, for example.

As for what works... I still rely on 4 and 5 inch grubs as search lures - just fish them deeper - but this time of year, if they're eating minnows, jigworms really can be awesome. We think of worms as immitating, well, who knows what, but a 4" sickle tail worm fished horizontally is an awfully good minnow immitation. I use 4 to 6 inch worms (bite the 6-inchers back an inch maybe), either sickle-tails like 4" Power Worms, Northland Slurpies Ringworms, or Persuader 4" Curly Tails, or auger tail worms like Culprits or Zoom U-Tails. Can either put them on a jighead (a ball head or mushroom head works. I freaking love the Northland Mimic Minnow heads for this though. The bottom of them is concave so they glide a little bit.), or a split shot/Stupid rig. Just cast 'em out and reel 'em in. Don't jig them or hop them - just let them glide along. I like minnow-immitating colors. White, pearl, or translucent colors like smoke, clear/flake, amber, sand... A 4" Berkley Power Minnow or Zoom Fluke on a 3/32 or 1/16 oz mushroom head is a really good search lure too, and you can fish them a little faster than a jigworm.

Crankbaits can work ok too at times. I like Deep Down Husky Jerks, Berkley Flicker Shads, or Glass Shad Raps.

With either jigworms or fluke-style baits, 'strolling' is a great way to cover deep flats or long breaks. Just pitch the thing out behind the boat, and move along slow with a trolling motor. Vary your speed a little, and the jig will just sort of glide along behind the boat. When you get a hit doing this, it's usually just a 'tick.' It can feel like a little fish. It's usually not... (Tried this last weekend, but I couldn't keep the walleyes off my Power Minnow. Stupid water donkeys. )

If they're eating crayfish, football heads with tubes work pretty well. Or Carolina-rigged tubes. Carolinia riggging is really underrated for smallies.

Once you find a concentration of fish, drop shotting can be out of this world. Try Gulp Alive. The stuff's like crack for smallies.... If it's a cold front, a big Redtail on a split shot rig works pretty well too.

Now, the worst-case scenario...the fish go 'out to sea.' Smallies can really suspend this time of year on some lakes - they're out over open water chasing YOY ciscoes, smelt, if the lake has them, or shiners or who knows what else. When they suspend they still don't go far from where they were - often only a couple hundred yards - but finding them can be a real chore. Look for baitfish, try to spot fish on your graph and hope for the best. Most of the time I stroll with a jigworm (white Culprits or a white ribbon tail Power Worm bitten off to about 5") on a 1/16 oz head. I think that gets me down maybe 8-10 feet. In clear water they'll come up a long ways... If they're deeper, I switch to a Power Minnow or Fluke on the same head. Sometimes you can get them busting bait and catch them on topwaters or jerkbaits, but it's nothing you can count on. If you find a pod of fish, you can actually drop shot for them. Just hover over them, watch your front graph to see where your bait's at, and hang it in front of them. (John Murray took 3rd on Erie in the Bassmaster Elite doing this a couple weeks ago) It's like ice fishing. Bottom line though is suspended fish are a challenge. If you get lucky and find a school busting bait, it can be fast and furious for a while, but most of the time, it's scratch and scrape. If you catch 5 suspended fish out of one area, you're doing good.

Anyhow - could go on probably. Problem this time of year usually isn't catching them, it's finding them. They can really shift around as they change what they're eating at the moment, and since they're a little deeper, searching for them gets a little more time-consuming.

Cheers,

Rob Kimm

[bassNspear]

great information buddy. helps me out alot.

[Juan Grande]

"Try Gulp Alive. The stuff's like crack for smallies...."

LOL

[Duck-o-holic]

What color(s) do you like Juan??

[Juan Grande]

I'm not a smallmouth expert by any means, but we had good luck on Mille Lacs with light brown or pumpkin colored plastic craws on black jigs. We also got a few on green 4" senkos.