Summer smallmouth in shallow lakes

[casts_by_fly]

Hi All,

 

The same lake I posted about earlier this year looking for smallmouth help is calling my name.  Knowing that 4+ lb smallmouth live there is like a drug that keeps pulling you back.  If it were most any other normal smallmouth lake, I'd be looking at points, humps, and other rocky structure in or near deeper water.  This lake isn't that.  Its a big bowl that tapers from 4' to 12'.  Its a silty bottom almost everywhere  There are two sections that have rock- a flat in 2' of water that drops gradually to 5' and then more quickly down to 12' (where it turns silty) and another rock pile mid-lake that is 2' on top and surrounded by thick weed bed.  The rock pile also eventually gets down to 12' and silt.  I figure there have to be some smallies around those two spots, but I can't imagine that every smallmouth in the lake is in those two places.  I was thinking to ride the entire lake and chart bottom hardness, hoping to find some harder areas that are hidden.  Maybe waypoint the weedlines and target the edges, especially where they hit harder bottoms.  I don't associate smallies with getting burried in weed forests.  Should I change that perception?

 

I was figuring bottom contact stuff like swing head or tokyo rig rage bugs, swim jigs, a dropshot setup, and maybe jerkbaits or lipless off the bottom.  The bottom itself has a lot of filamentous algae so you can't get too deep down into it without getting a mess on your line.  The grass is a combo of milfoil and pondweed and is sporadic in places and a forest in others.  I've heard that some guys troll the lake to cover water and catch them in the middle of all of it (its 300 featureless acres with 40 acres around the perimeter that are interesting), hence my looking for something in bottom hardness or weed edges.

 

Anything I'm missing here?  I'm going to take an aquavue to check out anything that looks different on the Helix in the middle of the lake.