The last couple months has sure gone by fast! For me one of the reasons for this is that tournament season was in full swing. I competed in six different kayak tournaments since April, and now the schedule dies down a bit over the summer months. So, I thought I’d take this opportunity to share some of the strategies that have consistently been putting smallmouth bass in the boat.
A few of the places that I’ve been targeting the smallies are
Boyd Lake,
Horsetooth, and
Trinidad. There are plenty of other bodies of water that hold good smallmouth fishing as well (i.e.
Pueblo) and these strategies will work in all of these places.
The first bait I want to talk about is a finesse football jig. Specifically, there are two brands that I go to: Keitech and Beast Coast. These two brands make their finesse football jigs out of tungsten which in my opinion is a key component of this strategy. Tungsten is denser than lead so you can pack more weight in a smaller package (something that I find beneficial with smallmouth bass). Speaking of weight my favorite size is a 3/8oz jig. Tungsten is also more sensitive than lead so you can feel the bottom better. I like to drag this jig along rocky bottoms, points, humps, etc. My favorite trailer is a
twin tail grub. If it’s a tough day then the smallmouth might want less action out of your trailer, so in that case replace the trailer with a
Zman TRD. That combo paired together is known as a “ned jig” and can really do some damage on lethargic smallies!
Secondly, I’d like to talk about a similar technique but one that has a key difference. If you go to a lake like Trinidad or Chatfield you will notice that the bottom has rock but it also has a lot of grass mixed in. This can make fishing a finesse football jig difficult since it will constantly get hung up in those weeds. In that case I reach for a texas rigged craw. I tend to reach for a
3/8oz tungsten weight 95% of the time since I can fish it both shallow and deep. My favorite craw for this technique is a
Zoom Speed Craw because I love its size and action for smallmouth. For the hook I like either a
2/0 Trokar EWG or a
2/0 Trokar Pro-V Worm hook. This setup landed me a
second place finish at a recent tournament and also the two biggest bass that were measured that day. Rig it all up weedless and it will allow you to work through both rock and grass and catch you a pile of smallies along the way! I use the same rod, reel, and line as with the football jig setup.
As we enter into the dog days of summer there are a few more techniques that I will rely on over these previous two suggestions. Summer means hot days and heavy boat traffic, so I prefer to wake up early to take advantage of the morning bite before calling it a day by noon. Early summer mornings for me means topwater time! When it comes to smallmouth there are three topwater baits that do my heavy lifting in the summer months: a
whopper plopper,
walking bait, and
popper. To make things simple this is when I generally reach for each one. If there is a chop on the water then I go for the whopper plopper. It allows you to cover a lot of water and help the fish hone in on your lure when there’s a little breeze. When it’s glass calm out then I reach for a walking bait. The smooth surface of the water makes walking these guys a breeze and still allows you to cover a lot of water. Bonus tip:
try working your walking baits as fast as you possibly can. The bait won’t look super pretty gliding from one side to another but if you work it super fast and throw in a pause here and there, I think you’ll be surprised by the results. Finally, I reach for a popper when I’m targeting small specific areas. That could be a bush sticking out of the water where I want to keep that bait in the strike zone for a longer period of time. That could also be when a school of smallies start to blow up on bait in a small area in open water.
The last two techniques I utilize throughout the summer are the dropshot and the ned rig. Of course these lures can do damage on smallmouth year round, this is the time when things can really get tough out there and require some slower finesse presentations. My dropshot setup consists of six pound line, a
Trokar Helix dropshot hook, and a
3/8 oz tungsten teardrop weight. I might bump the weight up if I’m consistently fishing deeper water, but once again I find that the 3/8oz weight will allow me to be versatile and fish both shallow and deep water. My favorite bait to dropshot with is the
Berkley Maxscent Flat Worm in the smelt pattern. A few other favorites are
gulp minnows,
roboworms, and
flatnose minnows.
Goingback to the ned rig. It seems like every bass tournament I compete in, there is someone who gets on a ned rig bite. A
Zman mushroom head paired with a
TRD is a smallie killer and can get you bites when nothing else will! A few colors to try are coppertreuse, green pumpkin, and the deal. However, you can use other baits on a ned head as well. The same baits I mentioned for dropshotting also work quite well on a ned head. Especially if the smallies are eating up smelt or shad, it isn’t a bad idea to rig up a gulp minnow or maxscent flatnose minnow on that ned head, cast it deep, and slowly drag it back to the boat.
That’s it for today’s blog! I hope you all got a little something out of it! I wanted to let you know that if you use any of the links in this blog to make a purchase, you’ll be supporting a local angler with a small commission! Thanks for reading and tight lines!
