By Ronnie Parris
Hey folks, hope everyone had a great holiday season and all of your family is well. On a resent fishing trip, I was reminded of just how powerful and fun a smallmouth bass can be. These versatile fish can survive in a wide temperature range but really do the best in the colder, well-oxygenated waters of our Smoky Mountain lakes; although they don’t usually grow as heavy as largemouth bass, they more than make up for it with their powerful fight. No other species found in our local lakes can compare to the high jumping acrobatics of the majestic smallmouth. With that being said, some big, wintertime smallmouth never jump and choose to try to get back to the rocky bottom from which they came, as was the case with the one pictured.
My brother in law, Ron Rogers, was fishing with me on this cold overcast morning and we had caught some really nice smallmouth and yellow perch when he set the hook on this fat smallmouth. Instead of the usual surface dash to try and throw the hook, this beautiful female smallmouth took a terrible angle back under the boat and took drag several times before Ron guided her to the net. After releasing her and watching her on the Lawrence as she dropped back to the rocky bottom from whence she came, we continued to catch several more nice smallies that we released to fight another day The smallmouth have a diverse diet that includes shad, minnows, crayfish, spring lizards, and almost any insect that is unlucky enough to either hatch and pass by on its way to the surface, or fall from the air into the smallmouth’s path. I’ve cleaned smallmouth that were full of snail-like crustaceans.
Smallmouth make great table fare but unless I’m guiding and my clients are really wanting to keep them, I usually release them, especially the big females. One of my favorite ways to fish for our local smallmouth is with live minnows but I have caught them on night crawlers, crayfish, lizards, leaches, and a variety of artificial lures. One of my favorite bites is to work a rocky shoreline with an X Rap. My buddy, James McManus, and I have had some of the most exciting trips using this method. Even if it’s the smaller fish, having them hit on top still gets my heart beating faster.
No matter how you like to fish, you can usually adapt your lures to catch these little packages of dynamite. Over the last few years, one of the most detrimental things to the smallmouth population is the introduction of the blueback herring. Although the smallmouth feed on the herring and get really big, the eggs and the smallmouth fry are some of the herring’s favorite food, leading to what we’re seeing now on Fontana which is catching some really big, healthy fish, albeit a lower total number of Bass. Hopefully, our wildlife biologist will help even the odds some for the smallmouth by stocking stripers in Fontana to help control the herring numbers. Only time will tell. If anyone would like to come to the mountains and catch some of these hard fighters, this is the best time of year for it, and you can give me a call at 828-736-9471. As always, stay safe and take a kid fishing.
Ronnie Parris is owner and head guide of Smoky Mountain Outdoors Unlimited-Fontana Lake Fishing Guides, headquartered in Bryson City, N.C., heart of the Great Smoky Mountains www.smounlimited.com; (828) 488-9711.