TECHNIQUE
Reading the Water
In some natural lakes and reservoirs, smallmouths tend to move onto shallow shoals and shoreline structures during the early morning and the late evening. This activity happens to coincide with the daily peaks in crayfish activity, so locating crayfish is an important key to locating smallies. The cracks and crevices provided by broken rock bottoms are the ideal crayfish habitat. The highest density of crayfish populations can be supported by habitats where the rock chunks approximate the size of your fist. Broken rock, too, provides the type of cover which a big bronzeback can use to obtain shade, protection, and an ambush point.
Large boulders are super smallie attractors. The most productive ones are almost always on broken rock bottoms. Other fish-attracting cover such as submerged wood, pads, and reed beds are all the more attractive to smallmouths if they are found in conjunction with broken rock, and therefore crayfish. The edge or bottom transition, which usually contains weeds, between an area of soft bottom and a hard broken rock tottom can be an excellent spot to ind active fish. The vegetation provides cover and baitfish while the broken rock provides crayfish. Fish in these and other types of "edges" are usually active and therefore 'catchable."
In places where there isn't much broken rock, such as in eutrophic lakes and mature rivers, the crayfish and bass often use the thickly matted weeds growing from the decaying or muddy bottom as habitat. Under these conditions a particular type of weed or mix of weeds may be the key to consistently catching smallmouth.
In some reservoirs slab rock bottoms may make finding broken rock and vegetation impossible. Piles of brush and submerged trees, specially in newly created water bodies, may be the habitat of crayfish or baitfish such as shad. These strucures can be productive edge objects.
With the possible exception of specific river situations at certain times of year, smallmouths are never found very far from open, deep water. However, deep water is a relative term. A general rule of thumb for finding smallmouth is: the clearer the water and the less cover available, the deeper this deep water must be. We already know the lower limit, since smallies are seldom found deeper than 40 feet. Experience shows that in very colored water with lots of structure, depths of ten to 15 feet may serve as the shallowest of deepwater retreats for some bass. As water temperatures cool, deep water becomes very important.
Because of their proximity to deep water as well as the increased potential for food, bass-holding structures facing the main lake are usually better locations. Given the choice of casting to a boulder on the back side of an island facing a small bay, or one on the front side of the island with the shallow lake in front of it, an experienced angler would take the open-water situation every time, all other factors being equal.
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