Smallmouth behavior after ice out, pre-spawn, spawn, post-spawn?

[Neil McCauley]

Can anyone explain how SMB progress through these phases? Seems like fishing can change pretty drastically depending on where they are in the process. Any specific water temps to look for?

[Scott F]

Go pick up the In-Fisherman Smallmouth book.  It will explain in great detail all about the seasonal movements of smallmouth in lakes and reservoirs. 

[ww2farmer]

It's also very highly dependent on the body of water...............there is no "one answer".  For example, I only know how they move and behave (or I like to think I do) on my home lake...............and 15 miles away on another lake I fish a lot, but not as much as home, I have little exp. in predicting their seasonal movements. 

On my home lake just after ice out, they will still be in their winter haunts, which is usually the where the main lake basin. Which means they can and will be anywhere, as this lake is 80% basin................IE the large 30-35 foot deep mud bottom flat that covers the majority of the lake. They are out there following around schools of perch and other assorted bait feeding on blood worms that reside in the mud. Once the perch begin their movement shortly after ice out to their spawning grounds..................the smallmouth DO NOT follow them. They do not seem to like to get up in the littoral areas of the lake and compete with the pike and the largemouth that are waiting there for the hoards of perch to come in. Instead, the seem to start stacking up on the edge of this vast basin outside spawning areas, inching closer and closer to the bank as the water slowly warms...............round about the time the water is in the high 40's/low 50's they can generally be found just outside the first "break" in the littoral zone in hard bottom areas, relating to hard offshore cover like wood/rock/debris.

 They will stay here for a while, 2-3 weeks or so...............the first mass move to the banks occurs usually around the first moon phase (full or new) after the water has reached the low-mid 50's and is stable or warming.............a drop in water temp during this move will push them right back out. There is about a one week window after they move up, have the feed bags on, but before beds start to show up. Once the first beds show up............they come and go in waves for about a month, with usually the first wave being a large amount of fish, and each wave after tapering off...........for whatever reason, some years, it's one giant first wave, then random stragglers, and yet other years the numbers build the longer it goes on, what causes this I will never know. 

 Generally by the time the largemouth are done spawning in the warmer backwaters, the first wave of smallmouth are about done on the main lake....Then the largemouth seem to take over on the main lake...........often recycling the smallmouth spawning areas for them selves....but there will still be random smallies mixed in here and there. The smallmouth that have folded up camp and left the shallows usually stop and hang out for a couple weeks in the same depth/areas they used just before moving up...............then round about the time the largemouth are done spawning and head out to the same areas...........the smallmout all but vanish for the rest of the summer roaming around the main basin much like they do all winter. During the summer, I will run into random "wolf packs" or lone big smallies in largemouth land, but it's nothing I can predict or bank on. 

 Come late summer/early fall..................they come back into the same staging areas they used in the spring...............but this time.............they never seem to go any shallower. Some years they can be found for several months in these areas, some years only a couple weeks, and even after all these years I never know when they are going to show up until they do, or when they are going to  leave..........until they do. I have tried to tie it into many things...........water temp, moon phase, bait movement, etc......and every time I "think" I have found a clue to predict it...............they prove me wrong. 

After the water temps start falling fast in late fall, they move in steps, getting deeper and deeper, sometimes seemingly by the day, right back out to the basin, and we start the whole thing all over again.