surefire baits for smallies?

[hoglaw]

big fan of a weightless wacky worm.

oooh, the wacky worm is another one of my standards. But I don't fish mine weightless. I've caught a lot of fish in a lot of odd times on a flick-shake worm.

[drew03cmc]

Hoglaw, you are correct. Dave's heads are amazing. The weedguard has saved me numerous heads from errant casts. With that said, I can't say I have caught more fish on anything than a 3" soft craw. I've done damage on everything except a topwater, but that's a confidence thing.

[Al Agnew]

I believe we have now estabished that river smallies will hit just about anything.

My wife's favorite lure is a Rattletrap, and although I never use them, I keep a couple floating ones in the box for the rare times she wants to fish instead of reading a book while we're floating. Her biggest MO smallmouth, a 19.5 incher from the Mineral Fork, came on her Rattletrap, so Gavin, it ain't just a murky water lure!

I've seen a ton of people fishing hula grubs, just never fish them myself. When it comes to those types of lures, I keep it simple...a couple sizes and colors of tubes, and a small variety of jigs and trailers. I used to carry hula grubs and several other soft plastics, and found that I carried them around all the time and almost never used most of them.

And while live minnows, crawdads, and nightcrawlers will catch smallies most of the time, they are far from magic, and often lures will outproduce them, believe it or not.

In my opinion, the difference between the guy who always catches a bunch of them and the guy who often struggles is not the lures they use, but their presentation and efficiency. Pick a few lures that cover bottom, middle, and top, learn to fish them well, get efficient and accurate with handling your equipment and your watercraft, and/or wading stealthily and putting yourself in good positions from which to fish, and you'll catch a lot of fish.

[hoglaw]

Solid points by Al as always. The hula grub has pretty much replaced any kind of jig for me. The hit it on the fall, on the swim, on the drag, and on the bounce. I'm getting a lot more confidence in the lure that shall not be named, particularly for wading these days. But the hula grub is tough to beat for that drive-by pitch into the rootwad hole in the heavier current. Not counting this year since I've been playing with other stuff, if I did a pie chart of the lures I used at any given time on smallmouth trips, I bet the hula grub would account for at least 50% of the time, with a soft plastic frog in not too distant second.

I used to lug so much tackle in the canoe with me. Different baits for every possible situation. Multiple colors. Creature baits and stuff I never even used. I'm in the "bring at least four rods" camp for sure, but now the tackle box has gotten a lot smaller. For just about any warm weather trip in the canoe, I'd have two baitcast rods, one with a soft frog and one with a hula grub. And then one spinning rod with a ned rig, and possibly another with a flick shake worm. If water conditions dictated, I might fish a wiggle wart. I love sammies, but I hate having to pull the hooks out of my flesh which has become more of an issue now that I fish from a kayak.

I need to build a lighter pistol grip 4.5' or 5' rod for sammie fishing. It's a lot tougher in the kayak than it was from a canoe.

[Old plug]

1099GL-----I go along with Agnew on this. Your young fella. By the time you read all the stuff on this thread your will thoroughly confused I think

To me the important thing with river fishing is to treat the river is a live thing. It is moving and swirling around all sorts of things as it goes along its way. That effects how you fish. I would say if there was one surefire smallmouth bait it would be the jig. The thing is you got to learn how to use in conjunction with the rivers movements and the effects those movements have on the jig. Other things like the weight of the jig ,the materials its made out of and line your using also play into it. This is something you best learn on your own. It will take many hour to learn well. But it will do the job for you the rest of your life.

Understanding these basic things will apply to many other lures and even fishing in lakes.

[goosetalk]

I don't get to fish the rivers a lot, but always had a jig and a fluke or trick worm rigged up in the past. I always did well with these. Last week I had a smaller spook and the lure that shall not be named on. I tried the spook first and got a few bites, but they weren't hammering it. Lots of short strikes. I'm not the best with a wtd lure and I need more practice. I then switched to The Rig and started catching fish. We (3 of us) finally figured out a good pattern (slow current, wood) and at every decent spot we would pick up a fish or two. Funny thing is there was a another pair of anglers fishing wtd in the same spots and catching fish. They did catch slightly more than our total and there biggest was better than ours. I think a spinnerbait may have had the same results as the wtd and our bottom rigs. Lure type didn't matter near as much as the distinct pattern that day.

[holleybob]

I believe we have now estabished that river smallies will hit just about anything.

My wife's favorite lure is a Rattletrap, and although I never use them, I keep a couple floating ones in the box for the rare times she wants to fish instead of reading a book while we're floating. Her biggest MO smallmouth, a 19.5 incher from the Mineral Fork, came on her Rattletrap, so Gavin, it ain't just a murky water lure!

In my opinion, the difference between the guy who always catches a bunch of them and the guy who often struggles is not the lures they use, but their presentation and efficiency. Pick a few lures that cover bottom, middle, and top, learn to fish them well, get efficient and accurate with handling your equipment and your watercraft, and/or wading stealthily and putting yourself in good positions from which to fish, and you'll catch a lot of fish.

I am in full agreement with this^ plus fishing with confidence. That takes time to develop.

Many years ago as I was chasing steelhead on the St. Joe river in Michigan I was schooled on this very thing. I had struggled to catch a single fish but watched as an older gentleman was catching them on a regular basis. I figured he was in a honey hole.

After a while I reeled in my fly line tucked my rod under my arm and moved to a spot on the bank and just watched him fish. Before too long he invited me over. Of course I asked "what are you catching these things on ?" His reply was "it doesn't matter, I just know where to put it and how it's supposed to feel". I had no idea what he was talking about!

He started explaining and I started learning the nuances of placing your fly in the water colum that the fish wanted it to be in. Then he really blew my mind as he took a stick of gum out of his pocket put the gum in his mouth and took the silver wrapping paper and wrapped it over and around his fly. It was a gum wrapper fly! Within 8 or 10 drifts he caught another steelhead.

I tried and tried and never did catch a fish that day, but I did the next time !

[Hog Wally]

Green pumkin 4" chomper spider grub if I only had to pick one lure for the hole day.

[Hog Wally]

Green pumkin 4" chomper spider grub if I only had to pick one lure for the hole day.

[bagofdonuts]

Favorite fishing phrase "its not the arrow...its the indian"