Bass Fishing Techniques - Suspending Smallmouths
Bass fishing techniques for post spawn smallmouth require a shift in gears. So your flushed with your success during the spawn. You've been catching 3 and 4 pounders like it's your job, but after a couple of trips you wonder...WHAT HAPPENED? You throw everything but the tackle box and still come up disappointed. You go out to your favorite spots and just land tiny males with an occasional kicker in the 3 pound range. Depending on where you fish this may be great, but in lakes like Champlain or Erie you are screwing up! Lets focus on general size, not exact weight though. After the spawn is over, the bays and flats that you had so much luck on turn into a ghost town. It's like a party after everyone has left. What happened? Did I forget how to fish? Maybe I should do those house chores since the fish have all been caught? STOP RIGHT THERE You are starting to scare me! Your bass fishing techniques must change with the seasons if you hope to find the biggest smallmouth bass. What's happened is the big females (4 to 5 pounds and up in a lot of lakes) have pulled out of the shallows and are resting up. Spawning takes a lot out of a bass you know. The males continue to guard the nest and then the fry for a few weeks. Dad is getting tired too! The spawning depths, where everybody beats the bank, has become home to clouds of fry and small males. The occasional cruising females can be caught and are very welcome to frustrated anglers. The bass fishing techniques people are using haven't changed but the smallmouth have. There's the problem. This discussion will use lake terrain, but the same general bass fishing techniques applies to rivers. The calm pools and protected water of early season can make for tougher fishing after the spawn as well. River smallies generally are easier to catch due to limited terrain and visibility. There will be more to come on river smallmouth bass fishing techniques, but just think of each section you fish as a small lake. The same general rules apply as the bass get ready to move into summer mode.
Let's use an underwater hump for our example. This gives us several factors to illustrate. You have the top of the hump and we will assume it is flat. You have drop off all the way around into varying depths of “deep” water. Let's also assume the water depth over the top of the hump is 8 feet. Now the stage is set, so let's go fishing. The first step is a drive by with electronics to scan for smallies and the presence of baitfish schools. Bass fishing techniques for smallmouth revolve around underwater structures and weed growth. Identify the quick drop offs and any rocks or gentle slopes as well. The day you are fishing is not the best time to run over the top unless you give it a little rest before you fish it. Humps with some weed cover on top will be the best and this is easy to see on the fish finder. Our example school of smallmouth are in a mid-summer pattern and have a variety of prey to hunt each day. In the weeds on top of the hump, which can grow down to 15 feet or greater in clear water, they have young of the year perch. In many lakes this is a great source of food like the bluegill action for largemouth bass. You will notice fish rushing the surface as the bronze backs heard them into tight groups and attack. In the rocks are the crayfish, and are always an attraction for cruising bass and make several lures effective throughout summer. Then there are the schools of pelagic baitfish that swim a little too close to our smallmouth hunting grounds and get a good thrashing because of it. Smallmouth bass fishing techniques must cover the water column from top to bottom and you need to determine the size and color of their prey.
The top of the hump is actually a shallow situation that gets several migrations a day. Forget about the depth around the hump and use your shallow water bass fishing techniques. For the area on the top of the hump, mornings and evenings bring great catches with a small top water like a popper, jerkbait or prop bait.  A firetiger Husky Jerk HJ06 or Skitter Prop will get a smashing strike when tossed around the swarms of perch attempting to flee by rushing the surface. The same is true of a soft plastic jerkbait with an erratic retrieve to simulate a wounded fish trying to get away. The action should continue here for a while depending on the size of the flat. Playing and landing the bass quickly will help increase the numbers that are caught. If you have a partner along, you should be able to catch “swim buddies” as they follow the smallmouth that was just hooked. Smallies are aggressive enough in this situation to follow their hooked buddies all the way to the boat. Simply dropping a tube or jerkbait in front of them is enough to get a strike out of the competing bass.Generally as the sun comes up and the wind as well, smallmouth will suspend slightly off underwater structures like humps, ridges, points and the like. Lucky for the angler though is the smallmouth's ability and desire to move in and out of shallow water to feed. They come in from deeper water for tasty little crayfish and insects. These bass can be hard to catch though. They also have an amazing ability to move up and down in the water column. As you work a structure, keep your boat out about a cast length from the drop off with the front pointed toward it. The best smallmouth bass fishing techniques are no good without boat control. This is where a fishing buddy comes in. The angler in the back of the boat should work the upper water column with a slow moving worm/jig combo, jerk bait or top water. This will help find smallies out running bait. The guy in the front should cast to the shallows and work it over with a shaky worm/jig, craw imitation, shallow crank bait or other soft plastic to find bass on the feed. Work the entire edge before moving on top. This will quickly show the presence of bronze backs and what mood they are in. This will help you figure out if they want a vertical or horizontal presentation. After that you can key in on size of the lure, speed of the presentation and color. The mystery of where the bass went is solved when you locate deep water structures that are adjacent to the spawning flats that were in use just a few weeks eailer during the spawn. Use your electronics to find schools of baitfish near these structures and you can catch bronze bass all day long!
More great bass fishing techniques from Bill Dance!
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They will take advantage of any forage blown by the wind such as shad and other minnows and insects like mayflies or worms. Pretty much anything that comes by is on the menu. Bass fishing techniques here include light line and jig heads rigged with a curly tail grub, a crayfish imitator like Yum's Crawbug and a wacky rigged worm will get their attention. This windy side of any structure is key to consistently catching smallmouth as they adopt this suspending summer pattern.
It is very common to see suspended bass on the fish finder right next to others that are hugging the bottom. The fish suspending in open water tend to be your most aggressive hunters and will smash minnow imitators as they go by. Even in the middle of the day, smallmouth can be taken with a prop bait, a “walk the dog” style bait and poppers. Smallies will come up 10 to 15 feet to hit the right top water or shallow running crankbait in open water. The key is to keep your bait, like a jerk shad in the color of the natural forage fish, high in the water. At 5 to 8 feet is where the smallmouth expect to find their meal and that is where they are looking. A jig or tube worked under them won't even get noticed. As they suspend near schools of fish, they tend to be under they bait ball and strike from beneath.
