Some Thoughts On Winter Smallie Fishing

[Al Agnew]

Well, it's COLD. I get seasonal affective disorder during the winter if we have too many days that are either cloudy and cold, windy and cold, or just plain below freezing. In other words, I get real cranky. My wife loves winter. It's one of the few incompatible things between us.

Some of you will be fishing in this weather (probably not many, but a few). My rule of thumb for fishing is if the water is hard or the line will freeze in the line guides all day long, I just won't do it. I kinda got spoiled in the last decade up until the last couple of years--there weren't many stretches of the winters that got cold enough to keep me off the water.

I grew up fishing for Ozark river walleye in the winter. November to late February, if I went fishing it was usually for walleye with big live minnows, and I probably spent as much time trying to obtain the minnows as I did fishing.

Then I got interested in fly fishing, and discovered winter trout fishing on the Ozark stream sections that had trout. For a number of years, I did a lot of winter trout fishing.

About 6 years ago I started getting serious about winter stream smallmouth fishing. Learned a lot from my winter fishing guru, Nick Hamra. Started figuring things out. Started catching winter smallies regularly. Some big ones.

But this winter, it struck me that, like my former wintertime fishing pursuits, it gets to be a lot less fun when it's really cold. And the difference between winter smallies and trout or walleye is that the smallmouth are just not at their best when the water temps are down in the low 40s and below. The last trip I went on, the water temp was 37-39 degrees. The fishing was slow--in more ways than one. When it's that cold, you don't usually catch many fish. You have to fish very slowly. And the fish are also slow and sluggish.

There are other rewards. The rivers have an austere beauty in the winter that is so totally different from what they are in the summer. You see almost no people, and a lot more wildlife. I love smallmouth fishing November through March at least as much as I do in warm weather--if it's not TOO cold. And there is that challenge of fishing in the winter, so much different from the ease of summer stream fishing. I like a challenge.

So if tomorrow was going to be 40 degrees and light wind, I'd jump at the chance to go, even though I'd know the water temps would still be in the mid-30s most places and I'd be fishing for one or two good bites all day. But I think I'd be more likely to go trout fishing instead.

Maybe I'm a wimp...but I need this cold snap to end!

[KCRIVERRAT]

C'mon Al... if you're a wimp, what the heck does that make the rest of us? Don't know about you're neck of the woods, but over here in KC our side streets are like glaciers and we haven't had a day out of the teens since X-mas. Looks to be the same this whole next week too. One to three inches forcast for tonight also. AFLAC!

KC

[eric1978]

I've been thinking about driving to one of my favorite rivers, putting in and paddling up about a half mile to a spot where I know some good smallmouth are wintering. I think if I spent 3 or 4 hours slowly working that one hole I could pull a few out. I don't think I'm up for a whole day solo float, given the dangers of hypothermia and how one nasty logjam in the wrong place can mean death if something goes wrong. No thanks. I don't mind the cold, as long as it's not WINDY on top of it. I hate wind.

I haven't caught a smallmouth or even tried to since early November. I'm really glad I've finally begun climbing the mountain of knowledge that is necessary to learn fly fishing and all its related activities. It's a great cold weather time-killer.

[RSBreth]

That's my go or no-go decision maker too - line freezing in my guides. Cannot stand it, and especially bad on fly line. I paddled around the other day for a couple of hours mostly to get out of the house, but the water temps were right around 40, and that's some pretty slow fishing for Bass. If the water temps was 37 and then jumped up to 40 after a couple of warmer and sunny days, maybe. But not sitting at 40 for a week, or worse, dropping.

I love cold weather Bass fishing, paddling around in the chill with no one else in sight, or fishing from the big boat where there may be another rig parked at the ramp, but you don't see them all day, either. Suspending jerkbaits, of lightly weighted Clousers worked the same way as you would a jerkbait. I can't wait for a little warm up.

[Gary Lange]

I used to wade the rivers in Northern Illinois South and West of Chicago. In the winter I would hit the Water Treatment Plants and fish down stream from the discharges as the warm water brought baitfish and they were followed by the Smallmouths. One foot could be in 55-60 degree water while the other was in 30 degree water. A minnow on a Slitshot rig worked very well and so did a small Crappie jig with a Pearl Twister Tail.

[zipstick]

I've been thinking about driving to one of my favorite rivers, putting in and paddling up about a half mile to a spot where I know some good smallmouth are wintering. I think if I spent 3 or 4 hours slowly working that one hole I could pull a few out. I don't think I'm up for a whole day solo float, given the dangers of hypothermia and how one nasty logjam in the wrong place can mean death if something goes wrong. No thanks. I don't mind the cold, as long as it's not WINDY on top of it. I hate wind.

I haven't caught a smallmouth or even tried to since early November. I'm really glad I've finally begun climbing the mountain of knowledge that is necessary to learn fly fishing and all its related activities. It's a great cold weather time-killer.

A coup0le of years ago, I thought the same thing. Temps had moderated after a real cold spell in '08. When we got to the river, my accurate temp gauge read 31 degrees. and I'm not making this up. I saw a rim of ice protruding off most of the shorelines about four to six feet wide, but the ramp was clear. Since the air temp that day was into the mid 50's, I thought it was still possible to catch a bass. Directly I motored my 18 ft. jet up to the first warm water vent (spring) and was very pleased at what I saw. Perhaps as many as 6 or 7 really nice largemouth were holding around and disappearing up into the vent. These fish, I figured would be easy to catch. I could hold my boat 10-15 feet away from them without spooking the bass in the least. The water temp at this distance from the opening was a "balmy" 34 degrees. We went through just about every piece of hair and plastic I had in my tackle boxes in in sizes from 1/4 oz. down to 1/64 oz. and couldn't get a response regardless of the type of retrieve we used. I settled on my trusty little black jig and actually bumped one of the larger bass over a dozen times on the snout with no luck at all. Frustrated, we decided to eat lunch right there with my maribou jig dangling about a foot down and about 3 feet from the boat in the crystal clear water. During my last sip of coffee, one of those rascal largehead bass, about 19 inches long, slowly swam up about 5 feet from the bottom and gently engulfed my stationairy black crappie jig. Quickly, I handed the rod to my partner to set the hook. He yanked with too much gusto breaking the 4 pound test. The large bass slowly submerged to the bottom just a few feet from us wearing his maribou mustache. There, the fish remained for at least the next hour as we could get no more bites.

Now this story gets even more pathetic. I decided to motor up to another hole to try out our luck. After another 2 hours of fruitless casting in the second hole, we decided to call it quits. On the 3 mile ride downstream, I noticed lots of floating ice, and it occurred to me that my wake created going upstream had dislodged many shoreline chunks sending them into the stream. I could run pretty fast downstream dodging a few here and there thinking to myself, "Oh, what fun this is! My glee didn't last long as ahead of me and only about a mile from the ramp, lots of those big ice chunks clumped together to form an impenetrable dam. I saw the mess in plenty of time to slow down.

First, I tried to butt the iceberg with my jon boat, but many of the chunks were nearly half the size of my boat and really stuck together. This blockage rached about 40 yards down, and totally coverd the entire width of the river. I nad unintentianally set the perfect trap for myself by dislodging all that shoreline ice. I needed a way to get downstream past the blockage before dark. For the next 15 minutes my partner and I tried one thing and then another. Finally I got the boat headed toward the shallow shoreline by punching holes in the floe with my wooden paddle. I got on my belly with my shoulders off the square-lipped bow and delivered as many overhead jabbing thrusts as I could with that blade. What a workout! I decided if I had to get out of the boat to break the ice, at least I would be in safer,shallow water instead of the deep hole out in the middle where most of the ice had collected. Blessedly as we neared the shoreline, the ice thinned out substantailly and every "thwack" of the paddle brought us a few inches closer to freedom. Relentlessly, I pushed on. We did make that 50 yard trek through the ice and returned to the ramp before dark. My wood paddle was missing about an inch of its tip, but I was thankful that I had it with me.

There's a good lesson here on motoring with ice around the shoreline, and my foolishness about wanting to catch a bass in very frigid waters. Deep, deep wintertime is best for reading about fishing and not actually doing it.

[Al Agnew]

Wow, never thought about that ice. My wife and I did a float trip on upper Big River during a cold spell. It had snowed, and we figured the river would be beautiful in the snow. Didn't even take a fishing rod, which is the ONLY time I've been on the river without a rod in decades. Everything was fine until we reached a low water bridge about halfway through the float. The water was backed up behind the bridge for about a half mile, and it was a solid sheet of ice. Fortunately the ice was thin enough to break it up with the paddle, and occasionally even just force the canoe through it. But it took a good hour of hard work to get through that half mile.

Water temperature is very important in winter fishing. A difference of just a few degrees can make the difference between catching fish and freezing without catching fish. Anything above 40 degrees and I figure I'll catch a few. Anything below about 37 degrees and I know it's going to be exceedingly tough.

[jdmidwest]

Try duck hunting, you can watch the Mergansers catch fish.

Last Sat, I sit and watched my decoys ice in, about a 1/2 inch of it in 3 hours. Not once did I think about fishing or think I was cold. I kept wiggling the kayak to keep from freezing in though.