Hello all. I thought it might be of value to all of you what I have learned over the years of tournament fishing. I originally began my life as a largemouth angler in southern New York, fishing mainly conventional plastics and my treasured spinnerbaits and I had little smallmouth fishing experience.
When I first entered into tournaments/went fun fishing at New York's Lake George, Thousand Islands, Clear Lake and other relatively classic smallmouth waters, in addition to not so typical waters like the Hudson River, Mohawk River and others, I was a little apprehensive. I applied the spinnerbait to these waters as they were my confidence lures and because they are one of the most versatile lures.
In the process of learning how to smallmouth fish, one of the lessons that I have learned is that many times, smallmouths are much more reluctant to actually strike a spinnerbait, or a jerkbait for that matter, than their fat bellied cousins. I have tried just about everything at this point in terms of variables that I could change in order to get these many followers to actually strike.
This info works: Normally I will not simply retrieve a spinnerbait back to the boat without imparting some other variance along the way. If I notice that this straight retrieve will not draw strikes, I give the rod tip a sharp and powerful twitch, usually a few times during the retrieve but while reeling steady. Do this next to the boat a few times. Notice how the skirt pulses and flares out a little? Notice too how the blades flicker a little differently, and the bait slows for a quick second? This forces the fish to make an impulsive decision to strike. The twitch breaks the monotonous single action of the bait for a split second which breaks the fish's stare at a boring unnatural single action bait. You ever drive down the highway late at night after a long day of fishing and tend to "zone out" a little from staring at the line(s) in the middle of the road? But, say a deer runs across your path. Or somebody in front of you slams on the brakes. You snap out of it damn quick and become more alert to those kind of things right? Same principle here with the fish.
Also when you impart that little twitch it triggers the fish's natural sense of reacting to a prey item that made a mistake or is wounded. Even if a fish is not hungry or even stuffed, it will still react to this type of maneuver (by bait or live prey) like you do when a doctor taps your nerve during a physical because Mother Nature has programmed that fish to do that. It is a natural reaction to help the fish to stay alive, eat what it can when any opportunity, especially an easy one, presents itself. You are essentially trying to convince the fish that the spinnerbait is a real food item in this case, so when you think that the fault lies in the fact that your spinnerbait cadence is not convincing enough, assuming that you have already determined the proper color, blade(s) and head sizes, retrieve speed, etc. based on the dominant forage and it's size, weather, time of year, type of fishery, and the hundred bazillion other factors affecting your choices.
Now, sometimes this is not the only reason that the fish follow but do not strike. Have you considered that you may be offering the perfect bait in the perfect manner [a rare condition!;) ] but you are not allowing the fish enough time to get to the bait and commit before it sees the boat and thus knows that danger is near? This tends to happen in clearer water; the farther you can see, the farther fish can see. In that case it may necessary to allow the fish a longer time to catch the bait. That means, make longer casts. If you see fish following earnestly and then quickly darting away within a boat length perhaps, sometimes farther depending upon the water clarity, then you may need to haul that bait out a lot farther. Remember, the longer the distance a fish has to travel for a bait, either horizontally or vertically, the more time it will take for the fish to reach that bait. You may have the right retrieve speed, but you may not be allowing the fish to nail it before it gets too close to the boat.
As a last resort, if lengthening the cast and giving a few twitches during the retrieve does not work as well as expected, the first thing I do is speed up the retrieve. Usually when I start making longer casts I also speed up the tempo a little instinctively. I believe that the smallmouth is a very aggressive fish, much more so than the largemouth, and sometimes when you would normally want to slow down, you must speed up to turn the fish on. Remember, the North Country is the smallmouth's playground, the water temp is ideal for them most of the year and as such, they will be operating at peak efficiency. While not as swiftly designed as say, salmon, they are fast moving fish regardless and are conditioned to making high speed pursuits (thus the reason they fight so hard).
Lastly, I will change color. This is not to say that color is not an important variable, but I believe that I can get pretty close by relying on past experience and knowledge of the particular fishery. In the clearest of clear, I fish all chartreuse, chart/white or all white spinnerbaits (blades, head, skirt) in addition to a lot of translucent skirt spinnerbaits with plated blades, all having a dose of silver, green, blue, gold, pink and purple metalflake thrown in based on what the dominant baitfish forage of the fishery is. In more dingy, shallower water like that found on the upper reaches of the Hudson River, I tend to rely on more solid skirt hues and gold blades, which I like to throw in dingier water. Many times a slight color change may be all that is needed to convince the following, hesitant fish.
I will normally make subtle color changes, say from a bait with a
clear/gold metalflake skirt to a similar one with green added, or from an all white bait
to a white bait with a little chartreuse until I find the best bite, but I will not
hesitate to switch to a color on the other end of the spectrum, say hot pink in a fishery
that I would normally throw a white skirt/gold blade bait or something non-intrusive like
that. Smallmouth are difficult fish to catch consistently as they do not like to adhere to
a set of "usually happens" rules like the largemouths do. But I hope this
article sheds some light onto why SMB always seem to follow, and how you can catch 'em.
Feel free to email me about anything fishing or hotrod related especially SMB and Chevys
at:
pr43697p@stmail.pace.edu
Bass Wishes and Happy Holidays,
--Paul.