Walking back to his truck that night, he turned, grabbed my arm, said, "Here I am full and round and true. Nothing more or less. I am fact rather than parenthesis"
...Harry Middleton.
Once the bass are done with their postspawn funk and water has settled into it's summertime flow it's pretty easy to catch at least some smallmouth in the LMR. Water temperatures are high, the bass's metabolism is high and they are constantly eating. Hit a riffle or run and throw a rebel craw or an inline spinner and you will catch some fish. Just on problem though, they are likely to be small or medium sized fish. So where do those big ones you were nailing last fall spend their summers? Actually you are probably fishing the right spot just at the wrong time. I catch dozens of bass every year with scars from near death experiences. Patches where a big shovelhead has grabbed one, funny bumps and bulges where something toothy like a saugeye or a mink has chomped on them when they were little. Fish with big holes poked in them by a great blue heron. Face it, it aint easy being a fish. And fish don't get big by doing dumb things. And the biggest fish in the river have found out that the safest time to be out prowling around for food is after dark. Once they get too big to be an easy meal for a big shovelhead, it's relatively safe for a big smallmouth to prowl around at night. Now he's big enough to become one of those terrors stalking the night for smaller fish.
Riffles and runs are usually the best spots for locating active smallmouth during the summer. Food such as minnows, crayfish, and insects are plentiful in these areas and dissolved oxygen is higher, so bass love these places in summer. Even during the heat of the day on the hottest days, you can catch smallmouth on the riffles, you just don't catch the big ones. Bigger bass can catch bigger food and even though his metabolism is ramped up a bigger fish can fill up on enough minnows and crayfish during low light to last during the heat of the day. So during the day a big bass is backed up into a treetop in a big bend, up under an undercut bank, or tight to a big rock in a deep hole. If you make a great presentation you will probably get bit but that's not easy. Try coming back to those same spots your catching bass well during the day at night. Pick somewhere you are familiar with of course. Only a fool would mess around on a strange stretch of river at night. Besides riffles, if you find a good hole with lots of structure or a big rock bar in a good bend give those a try too. A topwater plug fished in the calm water of a pool in the middle of the night can draw big bass like a magnet.
Simplicity is the name of the game when fishing at night. I'll often bring just a half dozen lures I can carry in my pocket. It seems to me if a smallie is going to hit at night I can catch him on any reasonable lure choice rather than have to experiment around and fool the fish like you sometimes have to during the day. I wear a headlamp and bring an extra flashlight with me. If your batteries go dead or something happens to damage your light the last thing you want is not to bring a spare. A great hoice for night time is a lipless crankbait. A big one, say a half ounce or three quarter ounce model works best for me. This is often all Ill throw if im fishing a big bend pool. Big smallmouth, shovelheads, and saugeye will move up shallow on the rock bar to feed at night and you can catch all three on a lipless crankbait. I'll often use baitcasting tackle when doing this kind of fishing because of the likelihood of catching a big cat. I must have caught at least two dozen shovelhead last year on the Little and Great Miami rivers fishing a lipless crankbait at night. And two saugeye that qualified for the Fish Ohio award program as well as some of the nicest bass of the year. During the summer bass are homebodies and if you tangle with a big smallie during the day and lose him you can keep hitting that area during the night and up your chances of hooking him again. Just like during the day, the better the spot you fish at night the better your fishing will be. And since I'm not going to be as mobile as I would be during the day it becomes even more important to pick a good spot to try at night.
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