Morning smallmouth fishing??

[blauvelt3]

I am curious as to if anyone has better luck in the morning for smallmouth or mid day. I've always fished largemouth growing up and earlier morning was always best. They seemed to be more active. Last couple of years I've really gotten into the smallmouth. I always get up super early and drive a couple hours to do a float. I never really do all that well then as it gets hotter the smallies bite a bit better. Am I wasting my time getting up so early??? Is this something others have figured out or am I just overthinking it??

[Seth]

I prefer early afternoon. There have been several occassions where I didn't catch much early in an area and then hit it later between noon and two and just smoke them. This seems to be a smallmouth thing and not so mich for laregmouth and spots.

[jtram]

Im too lazy to fish early, if you are talking river fish, no need they will eat 24/7...

[Norm M]

go whenever you can. can't catch them if you aren't out there.

too many factors come into play to make blanket statements about what time of day is better.

[Al Agnew]

Even though conventional wisdom has it that bass don't like bright sunlight and go deeper during the middle of the day, river smallies haven't read the memo. I fish topwater all day long, and catch just as many on the surface at 2 PM as I do at 6 AM. They are active when they are active, and many days, as Seth said, they are most active in early to mid-afternoon. Fishing pressure has a bit to do with it, though. On the most heavily pressured streams the bass do tend to get less active with more activity. But most Ozark streams are not heavily pressured, and the fish "act naturally".

And especially during long periods of stable weather like you so often have in mid to late summer, the fish get into habits that don't change much from day to day. There have been summers where there was a magic time; you'd fish for a long time with so little action you'd swear the river was dead, and then they'd turn on and you'd be catching fish everywhere--and it would be about the same time every day. One year, that magic time was from daylight to 9 AM, but most years it was sometime in the early afternoon, and a few times not until the last hour before dark.

If the fish are really going to be active, they can be active all day, and I've caught plenty of fish early in the morning. But if I get a 9 AM start I'm not worried that I missed a lot.

[fishinwrench]

The thing I love most about smallies is that they are active on those beautiful days when I want to be out there the most.

[hoglaw]

I've been on loads of overnight floats where we got an early start and didn't catch them until the sun got a little higher. I'm sure there are great morning bites at times, but I feel like I do a lot better later in the day.

[trythisonemv]

Late morning early afternoon always work for me. Just before dark can be magical as well. All the big smallies I've caught were in afternoon on the river.

[Johnsfolly]

I have always had more success from 10 am to 2 pm for smallmouth and even brown trout. I always wondered if that was due to the actual time of day or the time it took to get to the spots where the fish were less pressured. I never stayed overnight to fish those same spots first thing in the morning to see if I would have done better.

[Gavin]

Mornings seem to be inconsistent, but mid-day & dusk seem to be consistent times. Most of my better fish have been caught in the mid-afternoon usually between noon & 4pm.