Summer 2019
®
follow-up techniques for summer smallmouth
SMALLIE BITE
By Glenn Walker turn it BACK on!
T
he months of summer have many great things
associated with it; long days filled with sunshine
and warmth, cookouts and even better, fantastic smallmouth fishing!
To effectively chase these brown fish, you need to be
able to quickly change your tactics to stay in the game and
catch smallmouth.
I am going to look at three popular techniques used for
catching smallmouth bass, and then the technique
you can call an “add on”, to keep the bite going.
#1 SURFACE TO DRAG
Fishing a topwater plug for smallmouth is a great technique as it is a visual experience for the angler and allows you to mimic baitfish on the surface as smallmouth are feeding on them.
They could be feeding on a point, sandbar or rock pile. Regardless if the cover is wood, rock, or weeds a smallmouth won’t pass up a topwater plug when they are feeding.
Depending on how active they are when feeding, will dictate how much action to put into your topwater plug, whether it is a popper, walk-the-dog style plug or prop style bait.
When that topwater bite tails off, many times that active school of smallmouth is still there, they just are no longer coming up top to feed. So, switching up and dragging a Carolina-Rig is a great technique to turn to.
TIP:
The important thing to remember is to use the lightest weight you can get by with to maintain bottom contact and that your leader length depends greatly on the water clarity and how far off the bottom the smallmouth are located.
Typically, I’ll use a 14- to 18-inch Seaguar
TATSU Fluorocarbon 15-pound test
leader with a 3/8 -ounce brass
weight. If I’m fishing a
deeper lake and need to
Credit Jack Gavin
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