Small Mouth

[catch&release1966]

Been fishing the Rock for years but never can't seem to find Small Mouth, any ideas?

 

Heading up next weekend.

 

Thanks in advance.

[STLbassbuster]

I fished the BBT event all 3 days. All my smallmouth were caught on the Ned rig In about 10-15ft of water. Indian point area. I did catch one at dawn on a jerkbait. Good luck and tight lines.

[Champ188]

Lower one-third of the lake, gravel main-lake or secondary points that slowly taper into deep water, Ned rig or 5-inch Yamamoto grub in your favorite shade of green. Can't miss em. 

[dtrs5kprs]

3 hours ago, catch&release1966 said:

Been fishing the Rock for years but never can't seem to find Small Mouth, any ideas?

 

Heading up next weekend.

 

Thanks in advance.

Pretty hard to avoid them from Baxter to the dam. Flatter gravel stuff, with deep water access. That doesn't necessarily mean hard edges/ledges. They'll also get in the trees in the creeks.

Stay away from the pretty postcard places. Brown fish like shallow gravel and wind. Be prepared to fish slowly, painfully slowly. Downsize line and baits. The Ned remains a smallmouth vacuum, in most of it's varieties.

If the weather is nasty, don't stay in the room. Brown fish like it wet and windy. A lot of times they'll stay on the same places with high skies and a flat surface, but get tight to the bottom and slow down. Still catchable, just have to approach them differently.

[Alex Heitman]

31 minutes ago, dtrs5kprs said:

Pretty hard to avoid them from Baxter to the dam. Flatter gravel stuff, with deep water access. That doesn't necessarily mean hard edges/ledges. They'll also get in the trees in the creeks.

Stay away from the pretty postcard places. Brown fish like shallow gravel and wind. Be prepared to fish slowly, painfully slowly. Downsize line and baits. The Ned remains a smallmouth vacuum, in most of it's varieties.

If the weather is nasty, don't stay in the room. Brown fish like it wet and windy. A lot of times they'll stay on the same places with high skies and a flat surface, but get tight to the bottom and slow down. Still catchable, just have to approach them differently.

 

Fished and stayed at Baxter last weekend and we only caught 2 smallmouth the whole trip. Rest were mostly K’s and a few 4 lb LM. It was so windy that it was really hard to fish areas I wanted to. We did catch some big crappie but they were also tight lipped and had to have it right in there face. 

[Hunter53]

See the bank in the background; look for banks that look like that with the gravel.  There will be smallies in the lake areas mentioned by the posters up above.

Pay very close attention to what dtrs5kprs says as he is a smallmouth guru on Table Rock.

[dtrs5kprs]

14 minutes ago, Hunter53 said:

See the bank in the background; look for banks that look like that with the gravel.  There will be smallies in the lake areas mentioned by the posters up above.

Pay very close attention to what dtrs5kprs says as he is a smallmouth guru on Table Rock.

Not sure about that last part, but the info on the bank is spot on 😉.

Gravel, or mixed gravel with small rock, on banks and points that look "scrubby"-ugly places. If you find one with a big chunk of slab rock in the middle of it, even better.

They will relate to ridiculously subtle features...dock anchors, little six inch wide runoff channels running down the gravel, old single branches laying sideways on the bottom instead of a brush pile.

Ned Rig will tell you faster than anything else if they are there. Might occasionally end up catching them better on something else, but it's a brown fish detector.

[dtrs5kprs]

25 minutes ago, Alex Heitman said:

Fished and stayed at Baxter last weekend and we only caught 2 smallmouth the whole trip. Rest were mostly K’s and a few 4 lb LM. It was so windy that it was really hard to fish areas I wanted to. We did catch some big crappie but they were also tight lipped and had to have it right in there face. 

Slabtastic!

Saw some pics of the wind. Tough old weekend.

[Hunter53]

I will add that if you are catching mainly kentuckies on those gravel spots; then you are fishing a little too deep. At least it seems that way for us.

[dtrs5kprs]

9 minutes ago, Hunter53 said:

I will add that if you are catching mainly kentuckies on those gravel spots; then you are fishing a little too deep. At least it seems that way for us.

Yep. Brown fish want to be close to deep water, not necessarily in it. They'll get shallow earlier, and stay there longer, than most folks would believe.