Right now as our rivers and creeks are dipping into the thirties I'm still out there trying to eke out that last bit of smallmouth fishing out of the dying year. I think over the years it has helped me become a much better stream angler the rest of the year as well. To consistently catch wintertime smallmouth you have to get to know your stream inside out.
You see, to survive the winter in a smaller flow requires a smallie to drastically change it's location and habits. It's been proven in numerous tracking studies that in small rivers and creeks a smallmouth will leave it's regular haunts where it has spent the rest of the year and travel as far as it has to go to find a safe place to overwinter. In what you might call a medium sized river like the Scioto River or the Great Miami River that might be a half a mile or even just a few hundred yards while in a small creek it might mean the fish travels all the way out of that creek altogether to a larger one.
There are no hard and fast rules here. A general statement like the above, "as far as it has to go to find a safe place to overwinter" is about the best I can do. There are extreme cases of smallmouth in really shallow streams in cold places like Wisconsin traveling thirty and forty miles. River fishing in general is like real estate in that it is location, location, location. And in no instance is that more true than cold weather smallmouth fishing.
So what does a smallmouth look for in a wintering hole? The short answer is somewhere the fish can be safe in all flows. Safe from swift current in flood conditions and safe from cold and ice in low water cold conditions. Usually this is the deepest hole around but not always. Sometimes a small but just deep enough and sheltered eddy can hold fish as well. Over the course of the year I try and file away candidates in the back of my mind to hit come December. But the only way to know for sure is to fish each of these candidates several times in late fall thru winter till you slowly build up a short list of spots that really do hold fish.
The bad news that ninety percent of the river doesn't hold fish is also the good news. Good news in that once you find fish you will have all the fish that were spread up and down the river concentrated in just a few locations. Yes the waters frigid and it takes finesse luck and patience but you know at least your fishing over fish and some quality fish at that.
Most of our streams also have some sorts of small warm water discharges into them. By warm water discharges I mean things that discharge water that is warmer than the rest of the rivers water. Things like cooling water from factory machinery, a power plant, even a waste water treatment plant. While these are often great draws when the water first starts to cool they lose their appeal as winter tightens it's grip. Like everything else in the river all water discharges are not created equally. Most have outflows that discharge into water too swift or two shallow for the bass to overwinter in. The fish seem to know instinctively that a sudden rise in water level will overwhelm the discharge with swift cold water and either kill them from thermal shock or simply wash them away. Often in midwinter these places will be packed with rough fish but not smallmouth bass. Once in a blue moon one of these warm water discharges will be upstream of a true wintering hole and will improve your chances of catching a fish out of that hole all winter greatly tho.
Once we find our wintering hole and thru fall have still been catching fish there how do we approach the thing in December when the river is really getting cold? Well look for the spot on the spot. It might be two or three big boulders, a little hump off the side of a steep bank, a gravel hump that rises to within a few feet of the surface that catches sunlight and warms faster than the rest of the pool. Again there are no hard and fast rules here as well but there will be somewhere in that particular pool that draws fish fish to it when they are in the mood to bite. Sometimes the clues are not obvious and you just have to fish the whole pool long enough to find that subtle spot on the spot.
Weather plays a huge part in whether or not your going to catch fish in winter. If the weather is constant and hasn't changed in a week you can usually catch a fish or two if you put in enough time. Let it warm up for three or four days in a row and the water warm three degrees or more and you might just catch several nice fish. And to be honest let there be a sudden cold snap and I'm still going fishing, just probably for saugeye instead on smallmouth bass.
Often in winter the water is as clear as it ever gets and you will double your odds at least by using lighter line. Sometimes your simply not going to get bit at all if you should be using six pound test in a small clear stream and your using ten. The same goes for lure weight. I winter fish for smallies almost exclusively with one of two different jigs. One is a hair jig of some sort tied on a light jighead. But the last few years I've mostly been using a three inch grub. The grub has the advantage of letting me tinker and adjust the size of the jighead all day long. I pour my own jigheads and being a river fishing junkie I pour a couple thousand every year. If you have ever poured jigheads you know they don't all come out perfect. There are rejects where the mold wasn't hot enough or the lead wasn't hot enough or you just messed up pouring it or whatever, you end up with some heads that are missing the collar or are only partial full. The better shaped ones of these I will save instead of repouring with an eye towards this time of year. I end up with an assortment of lightweight heads in all different weights. I tinker with these trying to find the right combination of jighead and grub for each different spot on the spot that will let me fish it the most effectively. Which means as slow as possible. Just a little bit of current or a difference in depth can make a difference in how much weight or lack of weight we need. Many of my spots on the spots are either boulders or concrete rubble and if I drag or work the jig along the bottom I'm going to get hung up. But if I can find the magic combination I can sort of float the jig along just of the bottom very slowly. This is much like the results achieved in lakes with the "float and fly" technique of fishing a jig under a float.
Light line also helps you cast lightweight jigheads as well. Plus most of the time I can position myself pretty closely to where I want to fish in a small stream. I often wonder if my camo deer hunting bibs and jacket I wear winter fishing helps with catching these close up fish in gin clear water as well.
I try to use as heavy a jig I can get away with simply because you get a better feel with a heavier weight. But a "heavy" wintertime grub might be a 1/16 or a 1/8 ounce one and often it's much lighter.
And although sometimes winter smallmouth will really thump the jig they are just as likely to take it without you feeling anything more than a mushy weight on the line.
Being a lifelong fly fisherman it came natural to me to experiment with the various small strike indicators nymph fishermen use when fishing really tiny jigs. Come December and January it's not unusual to find a foam pinch on indicator or even bit of yarn tied on my line. If I was honest with myself this may help as much with keeping my head in the game and giving me something to tinker with during the sometimes long waits in between bites as it does in helping me catch fish. Keeping your head in the game is a big thing in winter smallmouth fishing.
Midday is often best but I find that evening still holds an attraction for smallmouth. I work days so right after work I'll speed straight to the river so I can still get in an hour or hour and a half of fishing in before the short winter day is over. What I've found is that often right at dark there can still be a bit of an evening bite even though the water may only be in the upper thirties. I have found that the silence of the winter woods combined with the sun setting over the river have rewards all their own even on those all too frequent winter evenings that the fish don't cooperate. Just tonight across the river a doe walked the riverbank as the sky slowly turned brilliant red. AND I caught some fish, Walking out in growing darkness I was at peace with the world...
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