The smallmouth bass population at Table Rock Lake, Missouri, has blossomed in the last decade. By 2006, anglers had caught and released 6-pounders, good numbers of 5-pounders, and scads of 3s and 4s. Many expect 7-pounders soon, given the reservoir’s size, habitat, and bounteous forage.

Table Rock represents but one instance in which smallmouth bass are booming. Across the country they’re growing in range, number, and size, often in regions unpopulated by the species not long ago. In Oklahoma, the record was boosted to 8 pounds 3 ounces last year at Lake Eufaula, the state’s third new smallmouth record in four years. Reservoirs across eastern and central Oklahoma now feature smallmouth bass.

This is happening in impoundments farther north and west, as well. Idaho’s smallmouth record jumped to 9.72 pounds last fall when Dan Steiger boated his second consecutive record from Dworshak Reservoir. In New Mexico, Elephant Butte, once home to huge stripers, boasts an expanding smallmouth fishery.

But when it comes to finding smallmouths in Table Rock’s 43,500 acres, or in other expansive impoundments, anglers have been mystified. The reservoir’s size is daunting. Anglers frequently report catching a few smallies, but the fish are gone the next day. Tournament anglers have been notably suspicious of smallies, saying they’re not reliable.

Tim Sainato of Walnut Shade, Missouri, a guide and one of the area’s most astute anglers, blames some of that inconsistency on their pelagic nature. Outside the spawn, they roam in pursuit of threadfin shad schools, so their whereabouts are difficult to pinpoint.

The Prey Connection

In-Fisherman Field Editor Gord Pyzer is a former resource manager from Kenora, Ontario. He has studied smallmouth populations across North America and has insights into their nature. “Smallies are survivors,” Pyzer says. “Unlike largemouths they don’t need cover, so pelagic roaming suits them better than it does largemouth bass, as reservoirs age and woodcover disappears. I expect further expansion of smallmouth populations throughout the central U.S. for that reason.”

Noting that Missouri fish feed on crayfish as well as pelagic shad, Pyzer draws a parallel to the behavior of Canadian smallmouths. “When smallies key on crayfish, their behavior is far more predictable,” he says. “When they’re after offshore prey, such as smelt and ciscoes at Rainy Lake and Lake of the Woods, they can seem like ghosts. I’m sure this applies to Table Rock and other reservoirs when they pursue shad.

“Fishery researcher Dr. Mark Ridgway has tracked northern smallmouths and reported group behaviors that likely apply to more southerly reservoirs. He found that each day, groups of bass swam 6 to 9 miles, doing what Ridgway calls traplining. A school might move from a point on a shoal across an open bay to a reef, then to another feeding location. On reefs, they feed on crayfish; but packs often move offshore and chase schools of pelagic baitfish, then move onshore again.

“You can’t predict when the bass will arrive on a spot. Using tracking data, we’ve tried to find a timing pattern. But we’re wrong as often as we’re right. In tournaments there, it’s common for dozens of boats to stop and fish a traditional spot and catch nothing. Later, a team stops and catches 20 pounds of bass to win the event. But they can never do it two days in a row.

“To make consistent catches, it’s best to find a huge ball of bait that remains in an area smallmouths favor. As long as the baitfish remain, smallies tend to stay put and become far more predictable. But when the weather changes and prey moves, the bass vanish. That’s why we love the fall season up north, when smallies bunch together in deep water and wait for bait to come to them. We suspect they don’t roam in fall because they’re trying to conserve energy and fatten up for winter. Southern anglers may not have that advantage.

“When smallies are targeting crayfish, they’re far more sedentary. At Lake of the Woods, we tracked bass daily and worried when a tag didn’t move at all. We figured the fish had died. We dove to collect the tag and found the bass healthy and gorging on craws. It simply had no reason to move.”

Tactics for Suspended Smallies

At the Table Rock Bassmaster Elite Series tournament last September, Jason Quinn, a touring pro from South Carolina, made a discovery. During practice, he found a hot dawn bite on shallow main-lake gravel points on the White River arm.

Due to a fog delay on Day One of the tournament, the bite was over when Quinn arrived. As he tried to find a straggler or two, he occasionally heard fish breaking behind him, out toward the end of the point where it broke to the river channel. As he fished his way out, he noted a Rat-L-Trap-sized shad floating on the water.

Below the shad were 50 feet of water and flooded trees that reached within 25 feet of the surface. Quinn finally tried a Rat-L-Trap method he uses back home at Lake Hartwell. He made long casts with a black-chrome 3/4-ounce Trap, counted to 10, and began a slow, steady retrieve. On his first cast, a big smallie engulfed the lure. Over the next three days, he located 10 similar areas where he could tempt smallmouth with his Trap, and his most productive fishing occurred after 11 a.m.

At each spot, Quinn hooked a smallmouth within his first four casts. Then he’d spend about 30 minutes fishing it from various angles: outside in, inside out, diagonally, and parallel. He also found that all strikes occurred on a slow, steady retrieve. And the action was best when the sun shone brightly.

In three days of tournament fishing with his Trap pattern, Quinn hooked 18 smallies around 3 pounds each, as well as many below the 15-inch limit. To his dismay, however, all but 7 of the larger ones expelled the lure with headshakes and tail-walking, leaving him frustrated in 39th place, despite his check for $10,000. Though disappointed, he was pleased to have deciphered a way to locate and trigger Table Rock’s suspended smallmouth bass.

Mitch Looper is a savvy smallmouth angler from Arkansas who often fishes Lake Tenkiller in Oklahoma, a highland reservoir about 130 miles southwest of Table Rock. “I don’t fish for suspended smallmouths unless I spot schools of shad on sonar,” he says. “And I’ve had little success with anything but soft plastics when fishing for them.

“I caught my first big one at Tenkiller on a long razorback point that quickly dropped from 30 to 50 feet of water, then to 100. I spotted some big ones chasing large shad and, when I got close enough, I fired a Spook out there, but with no results. I then tried a spinnerbait to no avail. After catching a few drum on a tube and 1/4-ounce jighead, I fancasted out toward deep water at the end of the point.

“Nothing happened until I was over 100 feet of water. I fired a Hail Mary cast out into the lake and the lure stopped about 5 feet down. I set the hook and a giant smallie jumped, but I lost it. Next trip, I stayed way off the bank, casting into about 50 feet of water. On one cast, the line stopped. This time I caught a 5-pounder. This is slow and difficult fishing, but on a good day I can catch 5 that weigh 20 pounds. Casting against bluffs yields small fish, unless the wind is pounding in and the bite is on.”

Crawfish Patterns

Stacey King of Reeds Spring, Missouri, is a prominent angler on the tournament scene and a former Table Rock guide. He’s worked to pattern Table Rock’s smallmouth and says that on good days, it’s common to boat 5 that weigh around 18 pounds.

During all seasons outside the spawn, but particularly during fall, King targets fish on gravel points and major flats that have flooded cedar trees and an occasional hardwood. Points containing large rocks and gravel along with flooded trees attract bass that are bottom-oriented, feeding on crayfish. They tend not to roam or suspend, though he’s found them more likely to do so on cloudy days.

The best bite typically is between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Trees should sit in 15 to 30 feet of water, with 20 the optimum depth. The best are isolated, with massive branches and root systems. The best flats feature a ditch or two meandering to the main river or creek channel.

To work such thickets, King uses a 3/4-ounce Bass Pro Shops Lazer Eye Finesse Jig in brown-purple-flake, paired with a 4-inch green pumpkin XPS Double-Tailed Grub, or a NetBait Paca Chunk or Paca Craw. He trims the jig’s weedguard even with the hook point and uses his thumb to spread the weedguard into a fan-shape. The skirt is trimmed even with the bend of the hook.

To cover large structures, he makes long casts and pulls line from the reel as the jig drops, so it goes straight down. Once it lands, King lifts the rod from 2:30 to 1:30 position, shaking it vigorously three times. After shaking, he drops the rod back to 2:30 and begins the lift-shake routine again. He typically executes the lift-and-shake three times then reels in and makes another cast. He fishes quickly, covering an expanse of timber the size of a football field in about 20 minutes.

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.

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.