“If I go fishing often enough, sooner or later I’m bound to catch a big smallmouth!” is the epitome of wishful thinking. Unless you’re incredibly lucky, putting that beast in your boat will take planning and preparation. True, there might be a (as in one) 7-pound smallie swimming in the lake where you catch all those 13-inchers, but your odds of ever hooking it are beyond infinitesimal.
Therefore, your first step in developing a successful trophy smallmouth game plan should be determining not only where these superior fish live, but where they live in numbers large enough to warrant spending your precious time and hard-earned bucks to go there.
This is one of the “rules” of bass fishing that you need to unlearn if you’re serious about catching a giant smallmouth. While largemouth bass are indeed programmed to favor submerged brushpiles, matted grass, logjams and other forms of dense, gnarly cover, smallmouth bass relate more to a well-defined structural edge — such as a dropoff in a natural lake or a reservoir channel break — and to sparse, isolated pieces of cover, like a little patch of rocks on a sand flat or a lone stump at the end of a reservoir point. Many of the sharp dropoffs where I catch giant Great Lakes smallies have no cover at all; the fish are simply using the darkness of deep water for concealment. So when you embark on your trophy smallmouth dream quest, target structural edges and remember that less is more where cover is concerned.
When the surface temperature of a clear, cavernous Southeastern lake climbs into the mid-90s during July and August, big smallies move deep and go into a stupor. But after dark, they’ll gravitate to shallow gravel and chunk rock banks to gorge on crawfish and will absolutely decimate a jig or short-arm spinnerbait. Here in northern Michigan, prime trophy smallmouth lakes such as Charlevoix and Torch are churned to a froth by pleasure boats during the summer tourist invasion, but I’ll often have the lake to myself after dark, when those big fish move up to feed.
I’ve found that during the summer/fall transition, smallies will school by size and suspend around offshore baitfish schools — sometimes at extreme depths (see No. 8). Now the name of the game becomes locating a school of lunkers with your electronics; they’ll invariably be lurking around big clouds of baitfish, often near a sharp dropoff, an offshore reef or a submerged hump.
Most bass fishermen find moving water a drag to fish. Besides making boat control tedious, current pulls your lure presentations off their mark and creates a bow in your line that makes light bites hard to detect. But smallmouth, much more than largemouth, are completely comfortable in current — and if you want to catch a big one, you should be, too! Instead of being scattered across a wide area, big smallies will stack up and position themselves in predictable places where moving water is present — in swirling eddies, behind midstream boulders and in flooded trees — and use current like a conveyor belt to deliver groceries to their downstream lairs. On river-run smallmouth reservoirs such as Pickwick Lake, the vast majority of the trophy-class fish caught annually are bagged while a healthy flow of water is being generated from the upstream dam, and the big fish bite can literally shut off like a switch the instant generation ceases. Even so-called slackwater lakes may exhibit significant water movement. I’ve fished in current on Lake Michigan that was strong enough to roll a 1-ounce sinker along the bottom like a marble, and high winds can create considerable current in neck-down areas of smaller bodies of water. When fishing fast water, use compact lures such as jigs and tubes that sink into the strike zone quickly, and hang on to your rod — a monster smallie hooked in swift current will pull like a freight train!
But big smallmouth love rough weather — the nastier, the better! In clear lakes, wind and wave action set up predictable food chain scenarios. Drifting plankton blooms are concentrated and blown toward shore, causing schools of threadfin shad or alewives to follow this food source into shallower water — and smallmouth to move from open water to gorge on the baitfish. Waves crashing against the bank and runoff from heavy rains will muddy the shallows, prompting smallies to move tight to shore to feed on crawfish. Here in northern Michigan, early prespawn and late fall smallies will stack up at the bottom of sharp dropoffs; they’ll slam a blade bait with a vengeance, even though lake water is barely 40 degrees and the air temp might be in the teens. Sure, it’s cold, wet and miserable out there, but it’s amazing how fast a 7-pound smallie will warm you up!
You might want to rethink this decision, because giant smallies will absolutely plaster a Zara Spook, Tiny Torpedo, Pop-R and a host of other noisy topwater plugs. I’ve caught scores of monsters on top during postspawn and fall, when big fish are ambushing baitfish on points, channel drops, submerged rockpiles and other key structures. Even in gin-clear water, big smallies have a thing about brightly colored topwaters, so be sure to include hot colors such as yellow and chartreuse in your lure arsenal, and try dressing up your poppers with a gaudy feathered treble hook on the butt end.
Sure, you’ll catch plenty of smallies on 4-inch tubes and itty-bitty drop shot lures, but don’t let its name mislead you — a smallmouth bass will strike a big bait! I routinely catch wallhangers on bulky 3/4- and 1-ounce spinnerbaits with oversize tandem willow blades, big swimbaits and mango-size goby imitators.
Keep at least one rod rigged with a big spinnerbait or swimbait to satisfy the hunger of those behemoth bronzebacks that are hankering for a full-meal deal!
