When he finds an ideal tree, he pitches a jig into the heart of it and lets it fall to the tree’s base. If a smallmouth doesn’t eat the jig on the fall, King lifts and drops the rod while shaking it. It’s dicey to extract a feisty smallmouth from a labyrinth of branches, but it can be done with a gentle, not forceful, approach. The secret, he says, is to keep the bass from panicking and that’s done by steadily reeling—not violently winching—the bass up and coaxing it through the maze of limbs. When bass are active, they gulp the jig farther from the base of the tree and are easier to catch.

Springtime Tactics

Brian Snowden of Reeds Spring, Missouri, guides at Table Rock when he isn’t on the tournament circuit. He considers April the best month. Beginning in late March, he focuses on gravelly main-lake points with melon-sized rock. He starts fishing at the tip of points and along their inside turns, and then tries adjacent shorelines. The best banks offer a small gravelly pocket or two containing stumps or a rock cluster.

Snowden fishes these areas with a jerkbait when the wind is light and with a crankbait on windy days. His new favorite is the XCalibur Xs4 Stick Bait in pearl-shad and sour-grape. During the first weeks of spring, a jerkbait doesn’t elicit many strikes, but it excels for big fish.

On windy days, he probes small pockets along gravel points and banks with crankbaits such as the Cordell Wiggle O in crayfish hues. Another option for windy days is a 1/4-ounce jighead and 4-inch YUM Muy Grub on spinning tackle with 8-pound line. He casts the grub shoreward, allowing it to fall into about 7 feet of water. As soon as it lands, he begins a steady retrieve that keeps the grub’s big twister tail constantly sweeping bottom.

Table Rock’s smallmouth commonly spawn during the last two weeks of April, making their nests in 8 to 15 feet of water along the gravelly areas they frequented in early April. During this period, Snowden adds a 1/16-ounce shakyhead jig and a 4-inch worm to his arsenal. When the wind blows or beds are deep, he switches to a 1/8- or 1/4-ounce jig on 8-pound line.

As the shakyhead worm falls, Snowden shakes his rod. If he doesn’t get a strike on the initial fall, he retrieves it into deeper water by lifting the rod 12 inches and shaking it on the lift. He retrieves a split-shot rig with a slow drag.

Another option is a split-shot rig, consisting of a 1/4-ounce tungsten barrel weight pegged 18 inches above a 3-inch YUM Wooly Bug. To fish spawning areas, Snowden casts so the rig lands in about 7 feet of water.

Sainato’s Year-round Perspective

Tim Sainato spends 250 days a year on Table Rock Lake, fishing and scuba diving, and he’s developed an understanding of smallmouth habits there. During underwater explorations, he’s seen as many as 50 spotted bass in an area but no more than a dozen smallmouth, and that was at a spawning site. He’s also noticed that smallmouths seem always to be on the move. In contrast, he often spies largemouths and spots resting quietly in flooded tree branches.