Just the other day I posted some fish photos on Ohio Game Fishing's forum and somebody asked what was I was using. Rather than give him a throw away answer I decided to try and give the question a good answer, Anyways I thought it interesting enough to post here...
I think it's been about a year since I've given what one guy called the sermon. Let's see if I've gotten any better at it:
Just the other day Dan and I were fishing and this guy was there seining bait. He had a bunch caught and we both separately looked at what he had and made our lure choices according to what we both thought best approximated what we saw. Only the next day when talking about it did we both realize the other had done the same thing. For you see most of the rivers around here hold an astonishing variety of baitfish, The big three, The GMR, LMR and WWR all hold something like ten or twelve different shiner species, ten or twelve darter species and maybe fifteen other things like minnows, chubs, madtoms etc. Now every riffle or pool doesn't hold each of these, instead each fills it's own little niche according to that particular stretch of streams habitat. One riffle might be full of greenside darters and logperch while a hundred yards away 70% of the forage is spotfin shiners. And not only does each of these guys look different they act differently. So how do you make sense out of all this chaos?
Well there are a few different approaches. If you fish the same piece of river over and over it might be worth your time to buy a seine and a cast net and sample all the different habitats in your section of river. You could also go to the EPA sampling data and see if that helps you. If you google "water quality and biological reports index" you will find all the studies done on our local waters. Look under the appendices, that's where the tables of good stuff is. Then go to ODNR's species guide online, it has photos of all of our baitfish plus a bit on their habits and lifestyles. There are also some general guidelines you can use anywhere. Usually the closer to the shallowest water of the riffle the smaller, rounder and darker the average baitfish, things like darters and madtoms while the pools hold more things like shiners that are flatter and lighter in color. But like I said each piece of river is different than every other.
So going back to answering your question. The guy had a bunch of round bodied light colored minnows that varied in length from about three inches long to maybe five. I was throwing a Vic Coomer grub that was clear with silver flakes while Dan I think was throwing a light colored knock off of a Keitech Swing Impact. I try to carry three or four colors of Vic's grubs plus all three sizes of his curly shad in assorted colors to imitate flatter profile baitfish. I'd say 90 percent of the time I can get the results I want with these. Other baits I think work swell around here are River Rock swimbaits, keitechs, Big Joshy and the Jewel Sculpin. All of which look and act differently than each other. Just like the baitfish in our rivers. If, If I could only use one color of one bait, which I wouldn't want to do, I'd use Vic's three inch grub in either smoke metalflake or clear with metalflake. Those two are usually my starting points.
I'd like to throw one more thing out there. It's a scientific fact that big smallmouth hear better, taste better, their lateral lines work better, they smell better and they even see things better than smaller smallmouth bass. And in a bunch of studies it's been proven that bigger smallmouth are more selective than smaller bass. In other words taking the time to learn about the baitfish in your particular piece of river might not help you catch more smallmouth but I'm pretty sure it makes a difference in the quality of the fish you catch. Hopefully that wasn't too long winded an answer. I just didn't want to say "throw a purple pluot, it works better than everything else".
It's a puzzle we have to figure out every time we go.
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