Fall & Winter Patterns: On two of the days last September that Quinn, Snowden, and other pros were pursuing Table Rock’s bass, Sainato was more successful. One day he landed 14 smallies, and 7 the next, including a lunker weighing 5 pounds 2 ounces. Part of his advantage came from having constructed rockpiles on isolated gravel flats, humps, and points. He scattered hundreds of football-sized rocks in a 50-foot radius in 20 to 35 feet of water, creating areas where smallmouth can feed on crayfish. He also built many brushpiles, and it was from one of them that he caught the 5-pounder and 20 other hefty specimens, when Bassmaster Tour anglers struggled to catch a few keepers.

Though he has a penchant for catching smallmouth in secluded areas, one of his most productive coldwater terrains is obvious—riprap. He fishes Table Rock’s riprap banks from January through early April, finding fishing best on calm days. To fish riprap, he holds his boat in 30 to 40 feet of water and casts either a Rapala X-Rap jerkbait (purple ghost or glass ghost) or a 4-inch XPS Single-Tailed Grub on a 1/4-ounce jig.

Spring & Summer Patterns: From late April into early June, Sainato focuses on prespawn and postspawn smallmouth, noting that they don’t all spawn simultaneously. He doesn’t pursue bedding fish but uses sonar to search for prespawn and postspawn smallies feeding on schools of threadfin shad on gravelly main-lake points. The best areas are adjacent to the fishes’ spawning locations. At times, shad and smallmouth suspend 20 feet off bottom, or they may hold right on bottom in 10 to 20 feet of water. When he finds fish, he casts a 1/4-ounce jig and 4-inch grub and slowly swims it through the shad schools.

Over Sainato’s 33 years of guiding, May has been his best month, and swimming a grub across gravel points is his preferred presentation. On May 17, 2004, for instance, he swam a grub to tangle with 40 smallies, the 5 biggest weighing 23.40 pounds. On many days in May, he’s hooked up to 60 smallies of all sizes on a grub.

From mid-June into early fall, he fishes two types of locales. The first is gravel points, humps, and flats that he’s enhanced with rock and brush, which he says should have a significant drop-off into deep water nearby. The other locales are ledgy main-lake and secondary points with plenty of flooded trees—again, it’s important that they plunge into deep water.

While diving, Sainato discovered that crayfish inhabit the crevices and branches of Table Rock’s flooded timber during summer, helping to explain why fish seem to favor points that contain flooded trees. He also suspects that they may live in the brushpiles he’s planted. When fishing rockpiles and brushpiles, he catches most fish from 20 to 22 feet of water during low-light periods; when the sun is high and bright, 25 to 30 feet is best. In midsummer, the best smallmouth fishing is over by 8 a.m.