Fishing tips & tactics

How to catch Smallmouth Bass

Micropterus dolomieu

Smallmouth Bass illustration from the Bump Board app

Bump Board's tactics library for Smallmouth Bass — where to fish, what to tie on and how to fish it, season by season. In the app, these tips adapt live to the weather, the front and the light.

Smallmouth Bass — Prespawn

Where to fish

  • South-facing bays warm quickest, and in stable weather prespawn smallmouth feed in 2–6 ft. The biggest females stage a step away, on secondary points and 'stickouts' beside the spawning areas at the backs of bays and coves, in little packs — that's the trophy pattern. On the Great Lakes they're shallow until the water reaches the mid-60s °F; in the cold 40s °F they're confined to harbours and wind-protected bays.
  • If cold pushes in — an offshore wind, heavy waves rolling in — they retreat to 15–25 ft.
  • In rivers in the 50s °F they're bunched in the deeper bank eddies and pools; keep moving until you find the bunch.

What to tie on

  • Tubes are the all-season staple — jigheads up to 1/4 oz. In the coldest trophy windows (water in the high 40s to low 50s °F) it's small tubes and hair jigs fished painfully slow. A jig-and-grub swum slowly and horizontally covers the 40–58 °F window. After a jerkbait finds a pack, a 1/16-oz green pumpkin Ned rig is the clean-up follow-up.

How to fish it

  • Fish the warmest pocket you can find — on the big lakes the trophy water is usually right where a light wind blows directly into shore. Slow is the whole prespawn technique: painfully slow tubes, then slower.

If it's still tough

  • When they won't move in cold water, repeat-cast rule: five, six or more presentations to the same spot before you give up on it. Cold prespawn smallmouth often eat the cast that looks exactly like the four they ignored.

Smallmouth Bass — Spawn

Where to fish

  • Smallmouth spawn on sand mixed with pea gravel, nests built beside a log or boulder, in 2–5 ft. The males guard; the biggest bass hold the tallest, fastest-growing new cabbage nearby once the spawn ends.
  • River bass nest entirely out of the current, on sand mixed with pea gravel, nests built beside a log or boulder, in 2–5 ft. The males guard.

What to tie on

  • The sight-fishing kit: a 3-in hair jig — black is the best colour day in and day out — pitched to visible fish, and tubes. In June, pods of big bass feed in 1–3 ft on young baitfish where you can see them work.

How to fish it

  • Fish the sun at your back and your shadow off the water. A 1/16-oz black marabou hair jig pitched to standing cabbage clumps is the Shield-country sight-fishing standard.
  • During the spawn itself, poppers fished slow and quiet — the opposite of summer topwater style — are a season-specific play.

If it's still tough

  • Guarding males that ignore everything are guarding, not feeding — note the spot and come back after the spawn, when those same fish bunch on the postspawn rock pattern, hungry.

Smallmouth Bass — Postspawn

Where to fish

  • The postspawn funk lasts about a week — slow retrieves, deeper water than the spawn. Then the rock hunt begins: the biggest boulders, reefs and rocky points, and the 'elevator' — the sharp breaks the fish ride between deep and shallow. On the big lakes there's also the chalk line: fish suspended high over 40–50 ft of water, halfway between the spawning bay and the summer islands.
  • On sunny days, postspawn fish suspend in the new cabbage — and the biggest bass dominate the tallest, fastest-growing cabbage in the area.

What to tie on

  • Tubes, hair jigs and drop-shot rigs for the funk; then the rock baits — football jigs and craws on the breaks. For the suspended chalk-line fish, baits that hang in the column: jerkbaits and drop-shots fished high.

How to fish it

  • Slow down through the funk — deeper and slower than the spawn. When it breaks, hunt rock systematically: boulders first, then reef edges, then the break lines.

If it's still tough

  • Deadstick a soft plastic in place for one to three full minutes. In the postspawn funk, a bait that does nothing, for longer than feels sane, is a legitimate and proven presentation.

Smallmouth Bass — Summer

Where to fish

  • Summer smallmouth feed on top of reefs and humps in 2–10 ft. Wind blowing into a spot pulls them into 2–3 ft and keeps them there until the water clears. Late summer is the scatter season — the forage glut spreads them out, and the answer is to search faster and finesse more.

What to tie on

  • Tubes everywhere; lipless crankbaits and blade baits ripped over rock humps in 15–35 ft when they're chasing; suspending jerkbaits as the search bait on Shield lakes. Topwater over the early-summer cabbage flats.

How to fish it

  • Cover water in the scatter season — the pods are small and spread. When a jerkbait finds a pack, drop the Ned rig or a tube on them immediately; packs feed competitively for a minute and then it's over.

If it's still tough

  • Finesse is the late-summer answer: smaller tubes, drop-shots held still, deadsticked plastics. When bait is everywhere, your bait has to be the one that acts hurt, not the one that acts loud.

Smallmouth Bass — Early fall

Where to fish

  • As the water drops below about 60 °F, smallmouth gather on steep-breaking shorelines, main-lake points and rock humps, packed in pods — and they stay active shallow until the water cools into the 40s °F. Steep and rocky is the fall address.

What to tie on

  • The depth ladder does the searching: square-bill crankbaits across the rocks in 4–8 ft, fast; then mid-divers on the 12-ft contour; then deeper divers touching bottom on the 16-ft break — moving deeper in 4-ft steps until you find the pod's level. Lipless baits and blade baits rip over the humps.
  • Fall livebait is its own system: a lively minnow or chub dragged tight to bottom on a 1- to 1½-oz no-snagg sinker, the bait a foot off bottom, hooks #4 to 2/0 for 3–8 in baits — on low-stretch mono, not braid; the fish feel braid's resistance and drop the bait.

How to fish it

  • Pods feed hard — when you find them, work fast and stay on them. Deep-diving suspending jerkbaits with long pauses are deadly in near-white-cap fall weather.

If it's still tough

  • If the ladder finds nothing shallow, the pod is one step deeper — keep stepping down in 4-ft increments rather than changing lakes. Fall pods are somewhere on the break; the ladder is how you prove where.

Smallmouth Bass — Fall

Where to fish

  • Steep breaks, main-lake points and rock humps, in pods, active shallow on the warmest part of the day. Fall smallmouth bunch tighter than at any other open-water time — find one and you've found the group.

What to tie on

  • The crankbait depth ladder, blade baits over the humps, and the dragged live-minnow system on mono. Hair jigs and tubes for when they want it slow.

How to fish it

  • Fish the pods you've found thoroughly before searching for new ones — a fall pod is worth an hour. Slow down as the water falls through the 40s °F: tubes and jig-and-pigs are the cold formula (a 3½-in tube on a 1/4-oz head; 1/8 oz in lower, clearer water).
  • Slow down as the water falls through the 40s °F: tubes and jig-and-pigs are the cold formula (a 3½-in tube on a 1/4-oz head; 1/8 oz in lower, clearer water), and above about 42 °F, slow-rolled spinnerbaits and 3½-in jerkbaits in the deep pools join in.

If it's still tough

  • Hunt the warmest water — a creek mouth or bay 2 °F warmer than the main lake is a magnet in the cold months. Cold smallmouth gather where the water is least cold.

Smallmouth Bass — Late fall

Where to fish

  • Wintering water: on the Great Lakes, the ends of large points, deep reefs and rockpiles over 40–45 ft flats, around 40 ft down.
  • Wintering water: in northern rivers, deep, slow water around clay, rock and boulders. (In the biggest northern rivers these fish migrate — 70 miles and more has been tracked — while in smaller Ozark-style water they barely travel at all; know which kind of river you're on.)

What to tie on

  • The cold-water formula: tubes and jig-and-pigs — a 3½-in tube on a 1/4-oz head (1/8 oz in lower, clearer water). Everything else is a warm-day bonus.

How to fish it

  • Slow, deep and patient. Fish the warmest pocket of the wintering area and give a spot many presentations — cold smallmouth do not move far for food.

If it's still tough

  • A 2 °F difference is the whole game now — hunt the slightly warmer water (an inflow, a protected bay) before you change a single bait.

Smallmouth Bass on the ice — Through the ice season

Where to fish

  • Where smallmouth winter is well taught: deep water — around 40 ft on the Great Lakes, off the ends of big points and over deep reefs and rockpiles.
  • Where smallmouth winter is well taught: in northern rivers, the deep, slow pools around clay, rock and boulders.

What to tie on

  • Here we have to be straight with you: none of the smallmouth books behind this app covers fishing for them through the ice. There's no book-taught ice lure or rig for smallmouth to pass on, and we'd rather tell you that than make one up.

How to fish it

  • What the books do cover is their cold open water, right up to freeze-up and right after ice-out: tubes and jig-and-pigs fished painfully slowly in the deep pools (a 3½-in tube on a 1/4-oz head) — that's the sourced winter pattern, for open water.

If it's still tough

  • If smallmouth are the goal in the cold months, the honest advice from this library is to fish them in open water — river mouths, below dams, the last open pools — with the cold-water tube formula, and hunt your ice fish among the species the ice books actually cover.

Manitoba Master Angler

A Smallmouth Bass of 46 cm (18 in) or better qualifies for Manitoba's Master Angler Program.

Where Smallmouth Bass live

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