I had a friend say after my seminar that he wished my seminar would be available online for some friends that couldn't make it Sat. So for what it's worth here it is...
I'd make to make a few points about smallmouth bass that you never hear. Trophy smallmouth in particular. But these will make a huge difference in your fishing if you keep them in mind.
1st off, smallmouth bass are not largemouths. Pretty obvious right?? But we all grew up fishing for largemouths and watching TV shows about them. This colors all our fishing if we are not careful. Take cover or structure for example. You know, we have all been taught to look for those downed trees that have largemouths backed up into them or a clump of lily pads with a largemouth skulking underneath. Well smallmouth bass are different. If, if they even related to cover at all it's mostly to the edges. Or even off the edge.
But if you look at both Largemouth and smallmouth bass you will see they are shaped almost exactly the same. They are both built for short burst of speed. In other words they are both ambush predators. So if smallmouth bass aren't ambushing their food from cover how are they doing it? Well current is their structure. If you find a feeding, active smallmouth it is near current. Even when they seemingly aren't they are, we will get to that in a moment. What smallmouth bass are built for is to set in a slower current and watch a faster current and ambush the critters in that one. Or set in a quiet eddy behind a rock and rush out and nail something being swept by in the current.
We have all seen the movie Predator. You know where the predator can change his vision to see in infra red or thermal? Well I believe using their lateral lines and just the waters pressure bearing down on them smallmouth bass see their entire world as a world of currents and flows. As real to them as a wall in this building or the road out front. Not the flat image of the river we see from above but a rich 3/D world of fast water, slower flows, eddies, vortices and seams.
So how do we as smallmouth bass fisherman use this to catch our quarry?
Well, one classic big fish place for me is a debris flow point jutting out into the river. Say sometime in the last hundred years a section of hillside receives that storm of the century rain. A normally dry wash is suddenly a raging torrent and tons and tons of rocky debris is dumped into the river. This constriction in the rivers channel makes the current speed up as it goes around the point. As you know a spot close to the center of a wheel is turning slower than a spot on the rim of a wheel. The water curving around the point also has to do the same so it digs out the bottom and far bank creating a hole off the end of the point. As the hole is eroded over time there is more pressure by the faster water on the outside side of any material dislodged. Also often a secondary current right on the bottom is often set up. These result in dislodged objects being moved slightly towards the point every time they are moved by high waters. In multiple high water events the bigger material is moved closer to the point while smaller material is swept away. Over the course of many many years this can sometimes result in a a lateral sort of the rocky material off the point. With the biggest stuff that has stayed on the point after repeated events being right at the tip of the point and steadily smaller and smaller stuff laid down in strips as you go farther from the point.
What's this got to do with fishing? Well crayfish and darters love rocks. Stuff the size of a grapefruit especially. So somewhere
along the width of our point and pool of sorted rocks is a strip of bottom that is ideally suited for them creating a mini city of smallie food while the outside side of the hole might be swept bare of bigger rocks and is just a layer of fine gravel deposited between big events. In other words NOT crayfish and darter cover. Now sometimes shiners will use this fast water pouring over bare gravel too so you do need to throw a cast or two there too.
But what happens is a guy comes along fishing beaches his yak or canoe and walks out to the end of the point. He then makes a nice average cast to the center of the hole and fishes his lure downstream thru the hole. He reels in repeats and does this a dozen times. If he doesn't catch a fish he moves on. Well he cast over top of the sweet spot and his lure was barely in in it. Sometimes we are reeling in and catch a fish seemingly right at our feet. When this happens make sure its not a lateral sort situation. Cover the holes off the ends of points laterally with each cast following a different path that the previous.
After scouring out the hole the river bottom comes back up in the form of a run to meet the normal river bottom. If the slope of the run is abrupt enough this can set up a secret big fish spot that almost no one but you will ever fish. The faster water coming thru the scour hole and run will go over top of slower water with the abrupt run acting like a ramp. Then you will get a situation where down below the run where you wouldn't normally fish a layer of faster water is riding over top of slower water. This is called laminar flow. Well our ambush predator can rest in this slow layer and ambush things traveling in the faster layer without expanding much energy. And you have it all to yourself. A situation tailor made for big fish.
Now our point might harbor the ultimate secret spot. First we have our first big event that creates the point. Everything happens over time just as we have laid out. Then here comes another huge event. The whole river is in a raging flood many times higher than normal floods. And the raging river knocks the end off our point. The very biggest material that isn't completely swept away is now directly downstream from the new tip of the point. So you now have a deep instead of gradual slope off the end of the point. This creates a really strong seam downstream sometimes for thirty or forty yards. And for extra good measure all kinds of really big rocks under the seam for bass to stage under and ambush stuff. Hole run seam point and cover rocks all together. This is your best chance in the entire river to catch a twenty inch smallmouth if the place also falls within our next big fish criteria.
That is the concept of boundary riffles. After spawning till late fall when they migrate to the holes they are going to winter in smallmouth bass become extreme homebodies. Mature smallmouth will spend all summer in just a few hundred yards of river. Smallmouth consider all the way across the river riffles to be boundary riffles and will not cross them all river. So the key to catching a good fish is to find two boundary riffles with no easy access in between. Find our busted off point with a big seam off the end too and your in the money. Another sneaky way of fishing underpressured fish is to find the sexist best looking stretch of water and fish just across the boundary riffle from it. Every single fisherman comes to that great looking piece of water and fishes it. Completely ignoring the fish across the boundary riffle. The great looking piece of stream might support many times the number of fish as the plainer water but personally I'd rather catch only three fish all day if one is 19 inches long than a dozen fish all under 12 or 13 inches long.
I'd also like to talk for a minute or two about how by our backgrounds in largemouth fish sometimes make us select for smaller smallmouth bass. We all know that a big jig and pig is a trophy bass lure. And we all know smallmouth love crayfish right? So we fish big plastic crayfish and jig and pigs or a big tube for smallmouth. Well several studies have shown that the very biggest smallmouth are the most picky fish about wanting to eat small crayfish. Somewhere around an inch and a half is their favorite. I'm not sure if its an experience thing and bigger older fish just know a small crayfish is a much more pleasant experience or not. And a bass eating a bigger crayfish sucks it in, blows it out, sucks it in, blows it out trying to kill it before eating it. Making them much harder to hook if they do hit your big crayfish imitation. Ever wonder why you have trouble sometimes hooking fish on those big tubes? I'm not saying don't use those jig n pigs and tubes or plastic crayfish, just downsize them as much as you can. But weirdly enough those same bigger smallmouth consistently select for bigger minnow. Lots of food with no more fight at play there, just the opposite of those crayfish and their nasty pincers. Big smallmouth like a 4 or 5 inch minnow best, not the littlest size rapalas we are used to throwing. Ok, Ok, I know you caught twenty five fish last weekend on a little rapala or on a big four inch texas rigged tube. Sounds like fun, but how many of them were 18, 19, or even 20 inch fish? These rules are especially true when fishing those sorted rocks off the ends of our points. I have a harder time fishing a small jig or tube in the current off the ends of these points. But if I fish a 4 inch swimbait on a jighead in the same places I have no trouble at all. Either would work one is just way eaiser and thus more practical.
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