In cases like this, new tactics create a perfect excuse for recycling old favorites. Trout and pike fishermen should haul out some old spoons for those species and try them for bass in deep lakes, reservoirs, and in the Great Lakes. The Acme Little Cleo, with its seductive side-to-side wobble on the drop, has been a staple of mine for salmon, steelhead, walleyes, and pike for many years. The color patterns, many of them brand new this year, match ciscoes, shad, alewives, perch, and smelt. Several of the many sizes this lure is stamped into work for smallmouths anywhere.

Reel American, Tackle and More

Learning about a new reel manufacturer is great. Finding out they make smallmouth reels is fantastic. Finding out the reels are being made here, in the United States? Priceless.

Ardent Reels were on the drawing board and tested in the field for years before hitting the shelves. Owner David Gray says he was in no hurry, because he wanted to avoid the many bugs anglers often find in new reels. The line includes two new casting models and one spinning version. The Ardent XS1000 casting reel has a one-piece magnesium alloy frame, 10 stainless-steel ball bearings, and a 6.3:1 gear ratio, packed in a fine-looking metal-flake frame.

Ardent’s S-400 M spinning reel features a smooth Strike Saver drag, a one-piece aluminum frame, and a 5:1 gear ratio. The powerfully built gear drive is built for years of heavy use, with no loss of power or smooth operation. Both reels are the right size for smallmouths, with 120-yard capacities for 12- and 10-pound test, respectively. And butter-smooth drags give you a steady hand in landing line-sizzling bronzebacks.

If you haven’t checked out the G. Loomis Bronzeback Series of spinning and casting sticks, specially designed with smallmouths in mind, now’s the time. The lineup includes 16 rods, 9 spinning and 7 casting, with blanks selected to deliver softbaits, jerkbaits, spinnerbaits, topwaters, cranks, and float-and-fly rigs with precision and ease. Casting models feature blank-through-handle construction for better feel. The spinning line sports short foregrips and reversed reel seats that balance better, while allowing you to slide a finger up the blank when necessary.

St. Croix’s new Legend Tournament Bass rods offer blank-through-handle construction in all 24 models, each designed for a different application. There’s a 5-foot 10-inch Skippin’ blank for getting under docks. And, housed among their specialty blanks for walleyes, you’ll find the Legend Tournament Slip Stick, the most perfect rod out there for slipbobber rigs and bobber-wacky rigs, two tactics I suggest you spend more time with this year. The rod is 8 feet long, but telescopes down to a size that fits rod lockers, easy to haul and store.

Smallmouth fishermen have never had so many specialty rods to choose from. The lofty status maintained by smallmouth fishing today has encouraged special designs in tubes, goby imitations, spinnerbaits, cranks, and all manner of equipment we don’t have space to feature here, but we’ll get to them all eventually in the pages of In-Fisherman magazine.