More Smallie Action In River

[zipstick]

Pretty rare to get this low and clear water in our streams in April and the smallies are bedding now. Often I find just one real bedding community every 10 miles or so, even on a well populated stream, and this week I located two such places. I was fortunate to find them with B Man Monday and Tuesday of this week. With the water temps holding from 58-61, I was a bit surprised to find big males and females crashing my trusty topwater in these areas, but they were. Often I use the topwater to locate big smallies for clients. The smallies will come to look at it, and I can usually kill the bait enough to have them lose interest until my guest casts a soft plastic into the bedding area. We quickly release them to go about their family business. I would also recommend a barbless hook for inexperienced anglers when smallies are super aggressive as they are now. No need to throat hook a trophy with a barbed hook using a soft plastic offering.

These "spawning bedrooms" often have 5-10 adult smallies that usually go 13-20 inches with both males and females vulnerable to just about any well placed lure. Obviously, around cover a weedless offering such a soft plastic is a better choice. Better bets depend on water clarity and mood of the fish. Incidentally, The topwater bite died each day around 11 am, just as the water began to heat up. Go figure!

These spawning areas can vary a little each year as the rivers change from flooding. A bedroom may shift over a 1/2 mile away, and they do because the bass have found a better more protected area for spawning. Often siltation and removal of old logs makes the bass seek a better spot.

Let me tell you right now that smallies do not prefer any newly downed timber. They want to bed in piles of logs that have remained unchanged for several years, and these spots are pretty hard to find after the last two years of flooding. The timber that has remained nearly stationary since the 93 floods is prime for looking for these spawning communities. In two weeks the spawning season will be over, and by opening day the meat fishermen shouldn't find many easy to catch smallies protecting fry as was the case with last year's late spawn.

B Man and I caught 9 or 10 (we lost count) over 17 inches and here are two of the better fish. Enjoy. One last tidbit of interest. Nearly all of our big smallies have had lampreys attached over the winter. None of these good bass this week had them. Theory time. I think the other spawning bass are killing the lampreys in these "bedrooms." They are very aggressive at this time. My .02 worth.

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[Bman]

Nick Thanks again for the schooling. What a time those two days were, great weather, good company, and awesome fishing.

Here are a couple more pics for the folks. Note the one pic shows the Guru's real secret. He brought along his Smallie Pointer.

[KCRIVERRAT]

Those are some beautiful fish guys. Great report! I think I'm finally gettin' out this weekend. Hope to catch a fish of that caliber, but if not I'll still seize the day!

[eric1978]

Note the one pic shows the Guru's real secret. He brought along his Smallie Pointer.

He puts you guys on all those fish, and all he gets is that little cup o' water. I'd say that doggie deserves a punch bowl for those slabs.

[Clark]

nice smallies and where the river they fishing ? just curious ..

[zipstick]

nice smallies and where the river they fishing ? just curious ..

Clark,

These fish are caught in Eastern Missouri streams. All of our streams have good smallie populations. Yes, I'm being coy about specifics mainly becasue I don't want to see crowds on my favorite stretches. I don't mind sharing techniques and fish habits if it helps some guys become better anglers.

[Al Agnew]

Interesting about the lampreys, Nick. Yesterday I saw a pair of smallies on a bed, got too close before I saw them and they temporarily left the bed...and there was a lamprey wiggling in the bed. Did it just drop off one of them? Did one of them knock it off the other? Or was it sneaking into the bed looking to attach to one?

Another interesting thing...there were big redhorse spawning in all the riffles that had inch-minus size gravel, and I actually saw a pair of spawning smallies that appeared to be utilizing a redhorse bed that happened to be slightly sheltered from the current, with other redhorse beds all around it. I'm pretty sure they were in the act of spawning because both were heavily marked like they get when they are actually doing the deed.

Since the fishing was a bit slow and I had to cover some territory, I actually spent quite a bit of time just looking for smallmouth beds. Only found a few.

[zipstick]

Interesting about the lampreys, Nick. Yesterday I saw a pair of smallies on a bed, got too close before I saw them and they temporarily left the bed...and there was a lamprey wiggling in the bed. Did it just drop off one of them? Did one of them knock it off the other? Or was it sneaking into the bed looking to attach to one?

Another interesting thing...there were big redhorse spawning in all the riffles that had inch-minus size gravel, and I actually saw a pair of spawning smallies that appeared to be utilizing a redhorse bed that happened to be slightly sheltered from the current, with other redhorse beds all around it. I'm pretty sure they were in the act of spawning because both were heavily marked like they get when they are actually doing the deed.

Since the fishing was a bit slow and I had to cover some territory, I actually spent quite a bit of time just looking for smallmouth beds. Only found a few.

I don't see nearly as many smallie beds in rivers as I see largemouth beds. Mostly brownies bed a little deeper than largies. Once in a while, I'll see single fish beds, but I'm convinced that many smallies will use a very small area to congregate and bed. I've caught too many that had gangs of big bass within 30 feet of one another. Kind of like bluegill when they bed in large numbers fairly close to each other. I never see goggle eye beds either, and they bed very near smallies in some cases and about the same depths, just out of sight. By the way, on Monday we spotted one huge largemouth sunning beside a log suspended in about 12 inches of water. I figured she was near, or on a bed. The water was just too murky to tell. Anyway, B Man casted toward her and got struck hard. Unfortunately the buck on that bed bit immediately, not the large female of about 6 pounds or so. We left her alone at that point.

By the way, the theory that the big bass spawn earlier was borne out by my findings this week. Both 19 inch smallies, presumably femal, were spawned out already. We caught several more from 10-13 inches that had eggs ready to deposit. The moon will be full in a few days, and this will signal the height of the beddinbg for the year.

[Al Agnew]

I think there are quite a few differences in how and where they bed depending upon size and character of the stream. In the bigger rivers, my limited observation is similar to yours, they tend to only bed in certain areas, and often deeper. But it didn't used to be that way. Back in the days before jetboats when I fished the lower Meramec a lot in the spring, you could always find shallow beds scattered around if the water was clear enough. It was my observation that when jetboats first got popular, the wakes were really messing up spawning, as the silt stirred up by the wakes may have been smothering those shallow nests. I have a theory that the fish eventually adapted to the new conditions by spawning deeper in the more limited areas that were conducive to doing so. However, I may be all wet, since you were on the Meramec a lot in those days, too. I'd be curious as to your observations back then.

But on smaller streams, those the size of the stretch of Big River where I was floating it, or like Huzzah Creek, the beds are pretty well scattered up and down the stream in lots of suitable areas. The bigger fish will bed in pretty heavy log cover, smaller fish may be almost out in the open, probably against a lone limb or rock. That scattering may also be due to the fact that it isn't as easy to move up and down the smaller streams long distances to "perfect" bedroom communities.

[zipstick]

Ehrough the 70's 80's I didn't get out much during the spawn in rivers. Lots of lake fishing amd tournaments then for me. Teaching school sometimes demanded that weekends were for preparing for school the next week. Add to that all the messed up high water conditions we often get inspring and I really can't tell you much about spawing smallies before lots of jets hit the streams. Sorry. I ahve seen smallies spawn in June given high waters throughtout April and May.