smallmouth movement during big floods

[Markhat]

Good info guys. I am now fairly certain I caught the same fish. I guess I assumed that in all the high water, the bass would roam up or down river from one hole to another. After your stories, and reading some other research, I dont think thats the case.

[Al Agnew]

  On 8/11/2015 at 4:34 AM, joeD said:

"You are assuming that the fish moved from one spot to another. That the fish you caught were seeking shelter from the middle of the river. Maybe the fish on the bank were always near the bank, and the fish in the middle of the river just didn't want to hit what you were throwing. Far fetched I realize. We have a narrative in our heads, it fits conveniently often to our experiences.

Catching fish is always good, regardless."

I'm the first to challenge conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom in this case makes too much sense. Conventional wisdom has it that smallmouth seek shelter from flood currents by going to the banks and finding places they can get out of the current (and also going to the mouths of small tributaries where they can get out of the current). It makes no sense that they would expend the energy necessary to stay in mid-river under those conditions, and the movement to the banks is a pretty short movement. And I'm taking the guide's word for it that the banks are normally too shallow to hold fish, because I've seen other rivers in the northeast that were like that--gently sloping sand and rock banks almost everywhere just inches deep until you get well off the bank and with no cover. So since the bass were there when it would ordinarily be impossible for them to be there, they had to come from somewhere else.

Norm Minas up in Illinois is the guru of fishing high water, and he finds smallies up in the flooded brush all the time in places that are ordinarily dry land. He's been known to catch them around picnic tables and firepits. Flooded ground is a great "new" source of food as well as shelter, and I'm sure smallmouth take advantage of it.

[joeD]

Swing! Miss! Just giving you trouble Al. Trying to draw a card to an inside straight.