Prespawn Smallmouth Heating Up

[jifigz]

I made it out for a little bit the other day with another forum member here and landed 3 nice bass within a short time of one another. Anyways, smallmouths are starting to get more active and leaving their wintering holes. They are still in protected water with some depth, but soon will be heading to protected, shallow, warming water. Anyways, here was the best one of the day. It was a really nice fish and fat. Probably right around the 20" mark.

 

[icyguides]

Great report and that's a really nice bass. I posted this in the stream locations forum, but it would probably be more appropriate here:


I fished the susquehanna on saturday hoping for bass. The weather was awful, high wind and snow squalls for most of the day. The river was relatively high and on the rise. The near shore water was filthy from wave action. i fished a black jiggy fly under an indicator to replicate the "float n' fly" technique spin fishermen use in cold water. I threw it into the eddies and let it work. I ended up getting a nice channel catfish, but that was it. Water temp was 47 a little upstream from wrightsville (this area is affected by the warm water discharge).

 

[Fishidiot]

Nice!

Water temps on the Susky/Juniata have been hovering around the upper thirties/low forties but should be headed up now. In my experience, 42 degrees is a good threshold for pre-spawn bass. Spring has come very slowly this year - usually bass are gangbusters by late March. This year is slow. Good to see some luck. I had no luck in my only pre-spawn bass excursion this year. I would think if you can get out this week, the game should be on.

 

[jifigz]

Fishidiot wrote:
Nice!

Water temps on the Susky/Juniata have been hovering around the upper thirties/low forties but should be headed up now. In my experience, 42 degrees is a good threshold for pre-spawn bass. Spring has come very slowly this year - usually bass are gangbusters by late March. This year is slow. Good to see some luck. I had no luck in my only pre-spawn bass excursion this year. I would think if you can get out this week, the game should be on.

I agree, things are slow this year. But soon it will be awesome. The Juniata is in my front yard, so I'll be out on average 4 days a week like I am most of the year. Except for this year, of course, since the thing was mostly iced over for months. I'm hitting a spot that should be promising tomorrow, weather permitting of course.