Smallies on the Columbia

[Sphynx]

Over the last few weeks I have been endeavoring to pattern these fish in anything approaching a predictable pattern, the fish are laughing and I can hear it, I'm sitting 45 landed 58 hooked since the contract started 3 weeks ago, it isn't that I haven't caught fish, I clearly have, the trouble comes in with the only identifiable pattern I have is that these fish are finicky, and d**n willing to feed, I average 1.5 hours an evening over probably 16 days, a couple of which are skunks early in this period by foolishly assuming that rocks meant crawfish imitations are going to be important, during this period, and I have landed fish on paddletail swimbaits, squarebills, lipless, shakey heads, ned rigs, buzzbaits, poppers, and can't seem to figure out what the trigger is outside of proximity, seems to me I get a bait of ANY sort of baitfish near enough to a fish to become noticed at all they destroy my theories, should I just enjoy this period of being able to catch them on the baits of my choosing at my discretion because it just can't last, or is it likely that I am missing something important here? The number of fish landed/hooked seems to be roughly proportional to the time spent fishing it, and I'm truly stumped to guess why they are so easy to catch, the only two standing theories not utterly obliterated have been baitfish as the primary forage, strongly suspecting shad/white colored fish, and rip rap/rocks/current breaks seem to trump all other concerns.

[MassBass]

Summer on the river usually multiple kinds of baits can catch the active bass, the question then becomes finding patterns of cover, current, and depth rather than patterns of bait choice.