2 Questions

[kickyour_bass]

What are good techniques for cold water/fall smallmouth. I only have stuff for t rigs and tubes, some jigs as well..... The weather here went from 80 to 45-50.

 

What are your favorite color patterns for cold fall for a clear semi fast river. I fish the Milwaukee River up here in Wisconsin.

 

Thanks,

Patrick

[ironmike12]

Try some hair jigs...jerkbaits for sure...

[Scott F]

For smallies in rivers, in fall, pretty much everything that worked all summer still works. Jerkbaits gets better. When the water gets very cold, the float and fly and hair jigs work well.

[Delaware Valley Tackle]

You still have some time before you really need to adjust tactics. Pay attention to what the forage is doing. In our local river, big schools of baitfish migrate upriver in fall so the jerkbait, swimbait bite is good but we still catch them on tubes as well. When the water temp falls to 40*< the hair jigs come in handy. 

[Josh Smith]

I'm catching largemouth on topwater (Spooks mostly) and I'm at around your latitude and climate.

 

I would try jerkbaits colored like baby bass or sunfish.  Add some red in there. 

 

Do you wade?  I didn't get to this past summer and I'm hoping we'll have a bit of warmer weather yet where I can go wading, but they are emptying the reservoirs. 

 

My all-time favorite tactic for river fishing is to wade out (or at least find a sand bar or a bend in the river).  I cast out a small jerkbait and let it drift with the current to a breakwater like a rock.  Right in front of the rock I either twitch the jerkbait or tug it hard, depending, and more often than not something blows it up.  This has never failed me.  Generally I target all the rocks in an area like this before moving on.

 

Smallies hit like this, and recently it's been what I call razorfish -- walleye, sauger, and saugeye.

 

Funny thing:  I keep catching small channel cat on inline spinners so I've mostly stopped using them.

 

Josh

[OkobojiEagle]

Swimming plastics on exposed hook jigheads (grubs & worms), spinnerbaits, shallow crankbaits ( DT 4, DT 6, various wake baits) & jerkbaits if the water is clear and the current is very slow...

 

 

oe

[ChrisWi]

I fish in Two Rivers and it seems like when the salmon start to run the bass almost disapear in these rivers. I can get a few here and there but they're usually dinks.