Catching Smallies In Highland Impoundments?

[Chuck D]

We have a couple of lakes in this area (highland impoundments) that have smallies in them and our rivers & lakes have been CRUSHED with massive flooding this year. 

 

It's weeks later and the water that is usually gin clear is still very colored which tells me it's been mixed up from the bottom to the top of the water column and has not settled yet.

I fished for them Saturday all day without a bite and then gave up and went to catching LM's that were shallow on bream just to save the day which went fine and I boated plenty of green fish. 

I was trying to call them up with topwater via Spooks & Gunfish, bounced the bottom with jigs, big/heavy swim baits, spinner baits of various colors & sizes, drop shots, etc but I was thinking that they can't see the d-shot worm very well since this water is so dirty and it's normally ultra clear. 

Wondering if you guys who chase them regularly have any thoughts other than just wait for the water to clear up on how you'd go at this kind of situation or if there is a predominant post spawn/early summer pattern that I may want to consider?

 

The water has not been moved here on the Catawba River like this in decades and it was really bad flooding, just wondering if when it gets dirty if they go shallow and live with the LM's or if you think they just suspend until it gets normal again and deal with it and eat at night?

Thanks for any info.

 

[JayKumar]

My 2c: smallies are sight-feeders from distance, so you won't catch them on top til the water clears. Just had the exact situation you describe on the Delaware River here. We caught some on single-Colorado spinnerbaits (black, use a trailer hook!) and weighted wacky-rigged Senkos, sometimes just dragged behind the boat. Crankbaits may work too, we didn't try them.  Bites were subtle, fish were not aggressive, fish were not deep but were on the bottom and in eddies. Hope this helps!

[Chuck D]

Thanks, great to hear from you on this.   Oddly enough after throwing the proverbial "kitchen sink" at them I realized the two baits that I did not throw that day were crank baits and lipless crank baits as I typically don't throw cranks unless I can hit the bottom and deflect them off of something and the bluff walls in this impoundment are so steep that you can be 15' off of the bank and your boat is in 30' of water making hitting the bottom with a plug basically not possible.   What I tried to do facing that was run blades, swim baits, chatter baits, etc through the mudline hoping to displace enough water to entice a bite as well as threw several topwater offerings across the open areas or saddles of the points but to no avail.    

 

Thinking back on the day perhaps a lipless bait ripped or yo-yo'd may have created some reaction bites but I almost think that these fish are in shock much like FL strain LM can get when a cold front comes in except that in this case they just had literally hundreds of millions of gallons of water fall & flood the lake, raise it 10+' in a matter of days, turn it in to red clay soup, then the power company pulled the plug on the dam and let it run out which stirred up their normally peaceful little ecosystem and it might have just shut em down or freaked em out??

 

I'm going back in for round 2 on Saturday and hoping to see very clear water or clearer anyway and hopefully be able to mark some fish on my graphs and present to them vertically with d-shots, nail weighted senko's, etc if they won't chase but I'll be going for the reaction bite first of course.   Thanks for the insight and if you other guys have thoughts on this I'd love to hear them.   I am by no means a decent small mouth angler as they don't live where I normally fish so I'm traveling to them and learning about that species as I go.  Spots and LM are pretty easy, these however are a bit more finicky it seems as the LM's were eating like crazy in a foot of water and I smoked em on a swim jig when I'd take a break from not getting bit by smallies that day.   Thanks for participating in the discussion guys, I hope to learn from you on these brown fish.

[JayKumar]

Believe if you find them, they will eat.  Good luck!

[Crestliner2008]

I'd be using rattle baits and/or spinnerbaits. Hard to beat a Chatterbait jig with a Keitech Swing Impact on the back. Lots of vibrations.

[tholmes]

An often-overlooked smallmouth killer, especially in dirty water is the blade bait.

 

Lots of flash and vibration. 

 

Tom