Seeking Big Stream Smallmouth

[ozark trout fisher]

Great post, really informative.

[Danimal]

Great post Al. I can't disagree with anything written so far except maybe the Fall fishing thing. A good many of the larger fish I catch each year happen during October. But most of those come from a couple of rivers that I've fished for over 20 years and know every inch of. Dan-o

[Al Agnew]

Good replies...

A bit more on wading in gravel. I'm NOT saying you can't catch fish, including big fish, wading. All I'm saying is that I KNOW that the fish a cast length away can hear you when you're wading. I know because when I've been snorkeling on Ozark streams, I can hear somebody crunching gravel both in the water and on the gravel bar next to the water from that distance, and fish are better attuned to their environment than I am. Most big fish in Ozark streams have probably been hooked at least a few times in their life, and maybe they can learn to associate the crunch of gravel with a bad experience. If you're floating rather than wading, that's one less negative cue for the big fish (as long as you're floating silently and not dragging the boat over the gravel or splashing your paddle or dropping your beer can in the bottom of the boat).

Hank really summed up my efficiency point. When floating, as he said, you often get only one good shot at each spot, and to catch the big fish that's there you have to make the cast AND the retrieve count. The more trouble-free you are with your tackle, the better you can cast, the more care you put in setting up to make the cast AND make an effective retrieve, the more likely you are to get the fish to hit. And the more efficient you are at all this, the more quality casts you make and the fewer good spots you miss or mess up. If there is any one thing that separates the casual angler who might still be looking for his first 18 inch smallie and the guy who catches them regularly, it's this. When I float with one of those "casual anglers", it drives me nuts because they miss so many good spots. It starts with tackle in good condition, and from there it's probably simple practice and experience in handling your boat, reading the water, and handling your tackle. I don't think there are many short-cuts. But a lot of anglers NEVER get much better. Practicing doing the wrong thing only reinforces doing it wrong.

TrophyFishR, the jig and twin tail trailer is an excellent suggestion. A friend of mine used to catch a LOT of fish on a jig with one of those original plastic twin curly tail frogs on it by swimming it FAST and keeping it close to the surface, with the little white curly tail legs waving madly.

et84, your matching the crawdad color suggestion is also excellent. It goes along with my matching the bottom color suggestion, because the crawdads and other bottom organisms that smallies feed upon will usually match the color of the bottom closely. You match the craws, I match the bottom. One thing...not all crayfish are equal as smallie food. The most common crayfish in most Ozark streams is the golden crayfish. It's colored a yellowish olive with very dark brown bands across its body and bright red highlights on its claws and body segments. It also happens to have some of the biggest pinchers for its size of any crayfish, and also has a very hard, thick shell. If there are any other crayfish in the stream that are available to smallies, they often prefer them to the golden. In my home river, there is an olive colored, small pinchered, thin-shelled crayfish that I've never been able to identify to my satisfaction, that lives more in clay banks and underneath woody debri on the bottom in shallow water. When I was a kid and fished with live crawdads all the time, I found that the smallies MUCH preferred this one to the golden crayfish.

[joeD]

Splendid post, Al. It should be required reading for ALL Ozark smallie anglers. I'd like to add something, if I may be so bold, that was not mentioned, that I think is very important. It is simply this: One has to go fishing as much as one can. The more you fish, the greater your chances of catching big fish. You can't expect great results fishing a few times a year, regardless of tackle or the river you're on. It's a definite commitment that you need to make to become a better angler. One must get out there!

[shadman]

Great post Al. I had never thought about actually spooking the fish by getting out and wading. I always stop when I find a good looking spot and try to wade most of it. Probably because I don't want to deal with boat control. I don't suck at it, I just find it easier to wade. Of course my "solo" canoe is also a 17ft tandem. Gonna have to try to do something different this weekend I guess.

I agree with RS on agressive fish not always taking a slow moving lure. You probably do have to witness it to believe it but it does happen.

I may not now 150% about catching smallmouth but I know I'm at least 150% into it.

just wanna throw this out there,,, wading has always produced more fish for me. and i catch fish every trip that hit my lure right at my feet. sometimes walking will spook em, but not alot. they wont go far, and if u make long casts then u will be fine. and those active fish will chase ur lure right up to ya like ur not even there sometimes.,

i always fish fast, targeting the aggresive fish. Like was mentioned earlier, targeting the fish in structure is key. making the right casts and knowing where those fish might be. usually the in a certain hole u will catch em fast, just a couple casts and ur on em. after a few fish and a few empty retrieves, move on to next hole. keep moving! even if u see the bass in the water, if they havnt already tasted ur hook, they aint goin to.

[hank franklin]

Regarding choices of lures, colors, etc., my feeling has always been that presentation trumps the actual kind of bait. If you hit the spot and present the lure correctly, I don't know that it makes much difference whether you're throwing a chartruese worm or a deep diving wiggle wart.

I realize styles of baits (topwaters vs. slow-fished jigs, etc.) can make all the difference in the world in whether you're catching or not. But I think if you put the lure in the zone, and the fish is there, as long as your presentation is good the fish will oblige you.

[Al Agnew]

I agree, Hank. There are nuances to lure selection in that one lure might do something you want it to do just a little better than another lure in the same class--maybe one deep-diving crankbait runs a little deeper or has a bit wider wobble than another, for example. But both, presented well, will probably catch the same fish. And if you start worrying about whether the fish are more likely to hit one lure one day and a similar but not quite the same lure the next day, you'll end up carrying a whole lot of lures and spending your days frantically trying them all and trying to figure out which exact one the fish wants the most that day. Same thing with lure color. I have starting points for choosing one color over another, which may be valid or not, but once I choose a color for the day I usually stick to it, and it seems to work well enough for me. It may look like I carry a lot of lures, but really it's a lot of examples of relatively few lures, because I do choose different colors and sometimes different sizes of the same lure based upon water and weather conditions. For me, that's a confidence factor. And even my colors mainly boil down to dark vs. light. White, pearl, and chartreuse for light colors, brown, green, and black for dark colors. Or if you want to put them on a continuum, from the lightest and brightest to the darkest and dullest, it goes chartreuse--pearl--white--green--brown--black. Based upon what the water and weather are like and whether it's a lure the fish will be looking up at or down at, I pick a color somewhere in that continuum.

[Gavin]

Great post...I still struggle to catch big smallies on a regular basis...I usually catch a couple nice fish every year, but I've never caught one over 19" in Missouri...Caught a lot of 15"-18" fish and it still makes my day when I hook up with a smallie over 15".

Boat control, and missed casts when floating solo....and the fact that I use a fly rod often probably account for that....Its really hard to fly fish while soloing a canoe unless you are anchored, or you have a tandem canoe with someone in the back of the boat who's sole task is to control the boat for the person in front.

Float fishing out of a tandem canoe with the fly rod and big poppers, or a streamer can be very productive and efficient...No line to real in...just pick it up an bang into the next spot...Problem is most folks want to fish all the time...and preferably out of their own boat. I'm sure that would catch more fish, and bigger fish if we worked in tandem but it rarely works out that way.

When wading with the fly rod...I usually do best with top water presentations fished upstream...long casts and leaders are often needed especially in low clear water.....Hard to get within 50' of a decent sized bass w/o spooking them. You can get a bit closer in low light conditions and at night on those clear water creeks, but forgetaboutit during the middle of the day.

For flies.....

Topwater...

#2 sneaky Pete in Chartruese, make sure the rubber legs dont foul on the back hook...its worthless then.

Blockhead Popper..not the little ones..Heads on mine are about an inch wide, inch long...total length around 3.5 or 4"

Dead drift usually produces best...but sometimes a twitch or two will induce a hit, other times they want it chugged back as fast as you possibly can.

Night...big popper or a Coffey Grinder(fly rod tiny torpedo) fairly active steady retrieves.

Just Subsurface

Drab-Shenk's Streamers in various colors...White, Chart, & Black, sometimes pink...make it wiggle like a fluke

Flashy-Pearl Sparkleminnow

Usually 3-5" long..

Bottom..

I dont believe in realistic crayfish flies....Fish dont care if it looks like a craw or not, but some realistic ties work well as nymphs under a strike indicator...Don's Craw, Clouser Craw, or Bill Miller Craw.

Stuff that works w/o a bobber.

Flashy-Pearl, Brown, Olive, or Black Sparkleminnow

Drab-Brown, Olive, or Black R. Leg wooly buggers.

Usually 3-4" long on a number 4 long shank hook min..

Cheers.

[Bird Watcher]

All of this is really good stuff.

My favorite summertime pattern hasn't been mentioned, so I'll offer it up.

Nighttime floats with 1/4 black mini buzzbaits. No ligths, no paddling unless absolutely necessary.

If the moon is out, fish the shadows just like you would during daytime sunlight.

They also produce well at dawn and dusk,

Of my five biggest fish, two of them (18.5 and 19") came like this. It is intense to hear the buzzbait, whirring, then hear the fish blow up, then feel the load on the rod. (I actually hook more fish like this than I do when I can see them hit the bait in daylight)

Take a short float so that you can just let the canoe drift down the creek and walk it throught anything that sounds like a rushing riffle, for safety's sake, but this is an awesome way to catch big smallies when the heat is on in the dead of summer.

[patfish]

Nice post Al and the rest of y'all. Now, I guess the only thing left to do is throw all of this info into a word document, laminate it, hit the tackle store and head to the stream. Thanks!