Smallies And Sand

[Al Agnew]

Mary and I headed down to Current River yesterday with the jetboat. The river was high and murky, and the stretch we were on was not one I was familiar with, so I started out fishing an obvious wintering pool with a good sized spring coming into it. Caught a few fish in the spring-influenced water along a deep rocky bank. We went upriver and fished a few more areas, trying both faster-moving water and slower water, and found one more smaller spring that nevertheless had a group of smallmouth hanging around it. Water temps in the river were hovering around 51 degrees.

The first pool I'd fished was near the access, so with an hour or so left to fish, we headed back down to it. There was something I wanted to try...actually, somePLACE I wanted to try.

I'd noticed that near the head of the pool, across on the shallow side, there was a barely visible submerged sandbar with a drop-off into deeper water. No cover on it whatsoever that I could see. But I had a hunch.

Where I started out fishing it, both the gunk on my jig and the bottom composition shown on the depth finder showed a lot of dead leaves on the bottom. I gradually worked my way up the drop-off toward the sharper eddy and faster current near the head of the pool. The sandbar was about three feet deep, dropping off more and more sharply as I got farther up, and the deeper water off the drop-off went from five feet down to eight or nine feet. There was still no cover, just smooth sand.

Finally, I found the fish in a small area near the upper end of the sandbar. Four bites, three fish, all about 16 inches. It was a nice way to end the day.

There was a time, not many years ago, when I wouldn't have even dreamed of fishing that spot. But in recent years, I've found the from late fall through early spring, sand can hold a lot of fish. I've caught sandbar smallies on Big River and the Meramec, and now the Current. It's gotten to where I always check out the off sides of wintering pools, looking for sand drop-offs. When I find them, I find some fish. My last trip on the Meramec, I fished one of my favorite wintering pools, which has deep water along a bluff with a beautiful slow eddy on the bluff side, and caught a couple of fish there. But the river was a little higher than normal, and a sandbar on the other side that is usually too shallow (I thought) was just deep enough that I could barely see it. I went over there and fished the drop-off, smooth, gently inclining sand...and caught a dozen smallies.

That was after Zipstick and I found a sandbar on the off side of a small, very obscure wintering pool on the upper Meramec, and caught several nice fish there, the trip before that.

One of the first times I found big fish on sand was on the Meramec in a narrow pool with fairly fast water, certainly not the normal wintering pool. It was late February. I'd fished that pool a little earlier in the year when the water was very clear, and noted a rather narrow strip of sand along the bottom, just to the off side from the middle, in about six feet of water. There were rocks on the other side, then gravel and pebbles along the edge of the rocks, then this strip of sand, then gravel again rising up to a barely submerged gravel bar on the off side. I was fishing a crankbait that late February day, and I'd pulled the boat over to an eddy on the off side to make it easier to hold while I made rather long casts to that rocky bank. I got nothing off the rocks the first cast, but as the lure neared the canoe, an 18 incher latched onto it. Next cast, a 15 incher. A couple casts later, a fine 20 incher. They all came at the same point in the retrieve, as the lure crossed that strip of sand.

I have no real idea why sand can attract smallies. And I've fished plenty of sandy areas that didn't produce. But sand bars in a wintering pool can sometimes be magic. You'll know when you catch a fish over sand, too, because these fish will almost always be "faded". They'll be light in color with very little marking, obviously camouflaged to blend into the clean sand.

It's one of those things that makes river smallmouth fishing endlessly interesting to me.

[Mitch f]

Funny you should mention this, in the last couple of years I've caught quite a few fish on sand points in the winter. More times than not its been around logs in the sand. They also had the same color you described, and many had big lampreys attached.... a sign they are stacked up.

[fishinwrench]

Beds of sand often mark upwellings. Sometimes when the flow is just right the sand looks like it's boiling.

[cnr]

Another consideration is that the sand areas are probably the slowest flow areas. If the sand is dropping out and forming a sand bar it has to be low flow. Great spot for wintering bass to hold and have a shot at feeding too.

[cwc87]

Sand and smallmouth. I've seen smallmouth turn or flip themselves on a sandy bottom. I believe they use sand to adjust there bellies before the spawn. Or there like me sand is soothing to my toes when I'm out for a swim. On the Gasconade and Osage the bass like sand too. Most the time they are exactly where AL described them.

[cwc87]

Sand and smallmouth. I've seen smallmouth turn or flip themselves on a sandy bottom. I believe they use sand to adjust there bellies before the spawn. Or there like me sand is soothing to my toes when I'm out for a swim. On the Gasconade and Osage the bass like sand too. Most the time they are exactly where AL described them.

[bfishn]

Another consideration is that the sand areas are probably the slowest flow areas. If the sand is dropping out and forming a sand bar it has to be low flow. Great spot for wintering bass to hold and have a shot at feeding too.

Yep. When the current's rippin', I find tailwater 'eyes and cats the same way. I don't think it's the sand in particular that holds the fish, but rather the water velocity that controls both the sand and the fish. When the flow slows, (even without a significant drop in water level), the fish scatter (but the sand stays put).

[Al Agnew]

Yep. When the current's rippin', I find tailwater 'eyes and cats the same way. I don't think it's the sand in particular that holds the fish, but rather the water velocity that controls both the sand and the fish. When the flow slows, (even without a significant drop in water level), the fish scatter (but the sand stays put).

I'm not so sure it's JUST the sand signifying slower flows, although that's often the case. In a given wintering pool, there are LOTS of places with decent depth and slow flow. Given the choice between a rocky eddy, a log jam in slow water, or a bare sandbar drop-off, you would think that the smallies' distant third choice would be the bare sand. But there's something about the sand that is attracting them that isn't keeping them in the areas with "better" cover and the same current velocity.

[bfishn]

I agree Al, it sure seems like another factor at play. (If) it's Current, Cover, & Chewables that dictate river fish positioning, it would seem there's something there to eat, but I've no idea what it would be.

Without trying to be argumentative, I'd like to share something I learned at the Trout Farm. I had 2 side-by-side sets of 4 primary concrete raceways, each 4' x 50', with tapering depth from 18" at the upper end to 3' at the lower. Spring flow ranged from 400 gpm and up. The raceways were 40+ years old, and there were some cracks to patch before I went into production.

When the patching was done, I diverted the spring back into the raceways and timed the fill of each to determine the exchange rate. Once everything was full and flowing, I added an ounce of Malachite Green (an organic disinfectant and extremely potent dye) at the spring and traced the movement downstream.

For the apparenty identical rectangular raceways, logic would predict a fairly uniform, laminar flow, but that wasn't the case. Each raceway had a different flow pattern, some flowed faster at the bottom, some on one side or the other, none straight down the middle. The biggest surprise was the first pond (not too unlike a wintering pool) just downstream from the raceways. A "snake" of dyed water crept in an unlikly pattern before slowing enough to become diffuse. I had no sand to deal with, but after the occasional flood, leaves and twigs would deposit in strips on the pond bottom that closely mirrored an inversion of the dye movement. Later, when I had the facility full of fish, they often reflected positioning relative to what I recalled from the dye flow, at times in the faster areas, at times in the slower.

What I learned? Current is far more complex and less predictable than the surface would lead you to believe.

[Al Agnew]

I agree Al, it sure seems like another factor at play. (If) it's Current, Cover, & Chewables that dictate river fish positioning, it would seem there's something there to eat, but I've no idea what it would be.

Without trying to be argumentative, I'd like to share something I learned at the Trout Farm. I had 2 side-by-side sets of 4 primary concrete raceways, each 4' x 50', with tapering depth from 18" at the upper end to 3' at the lower. Spring flow ranged from 400 gpm and up. The raceways were 40+ years old, and there were some cracks to patch before I went into production.

When the patching was done, I diverted the spring back into the raceways and timed the fill of each to determine the exchange rate. Once everything was full and flowing, I added an ounce of Malachite Green (an organic disinfectant and extremely potent dye) at the spring and traced the movement downstream.

For the apparenty identical rectangular raceways, logic would predict a fairly uniform, laminar flow, but that wasn't the case. Each raceway had a different flow pattern, some flowed faster at the bottom, some on one side or the other, none straight down the middle. The biggest surprise was the first pond (not too unlike a wintering pool) just downstream from the raceways. A "snake" of dyed water crept in an unlikly pattern before slowing enough to become diffuse. I had no sand to deal with, but after the occasional flood, leaves and twigs would deposit in strips on the pond bottom that closely mirrored an inversion of the dye movement. Later, when I had the facility full of fish, they often reflected positioning relative to what I recalled from the dye flow, at times in the faster areas, at times in the slower.

What I learned? Current is far more complex and less predictable than the surface would lead you to believe.

Interesting stuff! It gives me an idea that's maybe almost the opposite of yours, though...maybe smooth sand bottoms mean very smooth, regular current flow, and cool to cold water smallies hang there partly because they don't have to work much to maintain position. They are still in current and current brings food to them, but unlike irregular bottoms where the current fluctuates and they have to either get into really slack water away from the current flow or continually work to keep themselves in one place and one position, they can hang in the current and still conserve energy. Yep, current isn't predictable, but maybe its more predictable over sand than over any other bottom.