The Mystery Of Winter Smallmouth

[Chief Grey Bear]

Well, apparently thats 2 fish that aint heard the news!

Maybe. But shouldn't we wait until those two are caught back at the same place they are tagged before we say they move great distances for the winter???

We all saw what some here thought about a few rogue hatchery trout.

[Smalliebigs]

Now, after seeing the report at the begining of this thread about a tagged fish that was caught way down river from where I caught my tagged fish yesterday I am getting a good feel of our migrating smallmouth. Not saying that all smallies migrate but now with the evidence in front of me I know what and were they go. Just my 02cents worth.

I am in 100% AGREEMENT with you Corey.....we fish alot of same areas though

[Al Agnew]

Still so many unanswered questions...

I happen to know from talking to him that Cory's fish yesterday migrated UPSTREAM from the mouth of the tributary where it was tagged. A long way upstream. So it went down the tributary at least several miles first, then UP the main river a long way. So, even assuming that fish migrated to wintering water and will migrate back to its previous summertime water next spring, it isn't a simple upstream or downstream migration. The fish apparently don't always go downstream to a wintering pool and then back upstream to summer water. You'd think that a fish that was looking for wintering water would just go downstream until it found water to its liking. But this makes you think that the fish might have some kind of "homing" instinct...maybe its parents wintered in that pool, maybe generations of that particular gene pool winter in that same pool. Or maybe the movements are just random roaming until it settles somewhere. The thing is, though...if you assume Cory's fish migrated purposely to wintering water instead of just roaming around after being tagged and ending up where it did for the winter, it had to have passed through a whole bunch of good, proven wintering pools to reach the pool where it was caught. Same thing with the fish I mentioned at the beginning of this; that fish traveled thirty miles down a river I know well. I just sat here and thought of all the pools in that thirty mile stretch where I have personally caught fish in the winter, and there are at least 20 good wintering pools which that fish had to pass through to get to where it was caught. Not to mention at least one proven wintering pool in the tributary before it ever got to the main river.

Two tagged fish don't make a hard and fast rule. Are these aberrations? Are they actually evidence of winter migrations or just random roaming? Will the fish go back to where they were tagged? Will they go back next winter to the same wintering pool where they were caught this year? Do their wintering pools change as they get older and bigger?

See why I call it a mystery?

[Mitch f]

Totally an opinion but I think the high water events we have had this year might just throw any hard and fast rules out the window.

I mean how much of a change of habitat does it take for a smallmouth to leave an area that it has been staying in for the last 2 years? A flood can change everything, some stretches are completely different from one year to the next.

[Al Agnew]

Totally an opinion but I think the high water events we have had this year might just throw any hard and fast rules out the window.

I mean how much of a change of habitat does it take for a smallmouth to leave an area that it has been staying in for the last 2 years? A flood can change everything, some stretches are completely different from one year to the next.

That's a good point, Mitch, but let me throw a few flies into the soup.

I've seen some things that make me pretty sure that at least some smallies are very reluctant to move, even when a flood wipes out their "spot".

Upper Big River a few years ago. There is a place where the river went through a long, fast riffle to hit an alluvial bank at an angle. The bank was lined with big willows that leaned out over the water, with their lower branches drooping all the way to the water surface and under it, so there was a zone about 10 feet wide along the bank where you couldn't get a cast into it. Not only that, but the current hitting the bank made an undercut beneath the roots of those willows. It was 4-5 feet deep beneath the willows, still fast water but just slow enough to make it likely to hold fish. The whole channel right there was only about 20 feet wide, the other bank was also thickly lined with willows, and that 4-5 feet deep water was from bank to bank. So there was really no way to fish it. You couldn't wade down to it, you couldn't fish it from the other bank, and by the time your canoe got through the riffle above, you were working so hard to keep it from sliding in under the overhanging willow limbs that you couldn't even make a cast as you approached. But, being the gambler I am when it comes to a possible big fish spot, I always tried to make a cast, and the summer before I'd actually made one good cast, back into a very small opening in the willow limbs, and had a big smallie follow it out, but by that time the canoe was too close and the fish turned around and darted back under the willows. So I knew there was at least one big one in there.

First trip of late spring/early summer, after some big spring floods. When I came to that spot, it was totally different. The river had shifted its channel away from that bank, cutting a new channel through the willow-covered gravel bar opposite the alluvial bank and totally by-passing that spot. The new channel was nothing but a riffle that finally swung into the alluvial bank 30 yards downstream, leaving that former run as a dead backwater opening up into the bottom of the new riffle. The river just below was a very shallow, no more than 18 inch deep, gravel bottomed, coverless run for fifty yards or so, then another long riffle before you finally reached a spot that actually looked like it would hold fish...and even there it was shallow, but at least had some nice rocks for cover.

So I floated down the new riffle and noted the dead backwater where the old spot had been. "So much for that big fish," I thought, " I wonder where it moved to."

I don't know what made me make a cast into that extremely shallow, featureless little run just below. It had been there for a long time so I knew there was simply no place a fish could hide in it, but what the heck, I made one cast with a twin spin right down the middle of it...and caught a 20 inch smallie. I am convinced that fish was the old resident of the former spot, and simply didn't want to move even though his spot was gone.

Second episode. Huzzah Creek in a stretch I usually float once a summer. There was a long, moderately deep pool, big rocks here and there on one side, brushy bank with a few big submerged logs on the other. Every year for three years running, I would catch one or two nice fish out of the upper part of that pool, and one of them, the biggest, would always be in the same pocket between two rocks. I'm pretty sure it was the same fish each time, because the first year it was 17 inches, the next year about 18 inches, the third year it was pushing 19 inches.

Now the problem was that each year, that pool would fill in a little more with gravel, and the deep pocket between those two rocks got smaller and smaller. In the fourth year, when I reached that pool, the pocket was gone, only 12 inch deep water with gravel piled up around those two rocks, no place for a fish to hide anymore. The rest of the pool was just as shallow along the former rocky bank; indeed, the rocks were now mostly buried under gravel. So I figured that my old friend was gone. But I happened to look over at the other side, where I'd never bothered to fish because it was out of the current and fairly shallow as well. And I noticed one log, sitting in about two feet of water, but it looked like there was enough room under the log for a fish to hide. What the heck. I made a cast with a Superfluke. There was a thin grapevine hanging down from the trees over that log, and my line got hung up in one of the little curlicues growing off the grapevine. The fluke, however, hit the water a foot or so away from the log, and this big dark shadow cruised out from under the log and took it. I ended up having to bail out of the canoe and splashily wade over to the grapevine and untangle my line while that fish tore up the water all around me for five minutes, but I got it...a 20 incher. That spot was the only possible place for that fish to live in that pool, and it was still out of the current and not an optimum place for any smallie, let alone a big one. But that fish just didn't want to move somewhere else.

So maybe some fish get run out of their living space by high water, but...even if they did, why would they go 30 miles to find someplace else when there would be hundreds of places just as good in between?

[Mitch f]

very strange fish behavior indeed! I guess we will never know the truth about the mystery for a long time. Maybe Chief is right, lets wait for the results of the chip tracking. But wait...is there a visable mark on the fish to tell if it has a chip? A river fishing tourney guy might throw it in the live well and travel 20 miles for the weigh in. Just joking

[Mitch f]

Well Chief, some of the results from the MDC tracking of smallmouth were announced last night at the MSA meeting. They used radio telemetry tags to track the smallies in one river. The fish were tagged in the Big Spring hole in the Current river, by late Feb and March a few were found to travel 30 miles upstream way up into the Jacks Fork. Some big, some small, but most of the tagged fish pretty well stayed within a few miles of the spring. The other tagging results will be available soon.

[Gavin]

Missed the meeting last night Mitch...I'm sure you were taking notes;>)! Anything noteable?

[Chief Grey Bear]

Well Chief, some of the results from the MDC tracking of smallmouth were announced last night at the MSA meeting. They used radio telemetry tags to track the smallies in one river. The fish were tagged in the Big Spring hole in the Current river, by late Feb and March a few were found to travel 30 miles upstream way up into the Jacks Fork. Some big, some small, but most of the tagged fish pretty well stayed within a few miles of the spring. The other tagging results will be available soon.

Did they happen to mention how many streams this was done on???

[Mitch f]

The only one with the radio tags was the Current. They said it was an unbelievably slow and painstaking process to locate the released fish. The regular tagging survey was on 6 other streams but the results are still being calculated. The one stat they did give us was roughly 40% of all the tagged fished released in the regular tagging survey were caught and turned in to the MDC, which is pretty scary to me as an indicator of heavy fishing pressure. One of the most funny things was that some of the anglers had admitted after they collected the money they had lied about the hole where the fish was caught... like the MDC would steal their honey hole.