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Hot Smallmouth Bite: As water temperature approaches 60°F, smallmouth bass seem more cautious in their feeding and cruise less in groups than a week or so earlier.
Early morning and evening now offer the best bites. Cover on flats holds smallmouths during this period. Water clarity affects the depth where they hold and feed. In murky water, check from 2 to about 8 feet deep, increasing to the 4-to-10-foot zone in moderately clear water, focusing on 6 to 12 feet in clear water. Expansive flats with minor depth variations and diverse types of cover attract the most prespawn smallmouths, and they spawn in the same locations. Attractive cover includes old weed or reed stalks, transitions in bottom type, logs, boulders, or slight variations in depth. The proximity of a flat to deep water also is important, as it gives smallmouths the option to abandon the shallow flat under adverse conditions and move to the vertical freedom of a sharp break.
The right kind of day can yield an incredible topwater bite, whether you twitch a balsa minnow, walk a Zara Spook, or pop a chugger. Smallmouths in shallow water tend to hold near cover like boulders, bulrush stalks, stumps, or in slight depressions. In addition to topwater baits, rattlebaits, crankbaits, and spinners continue to produce until the spawn begins, though negative conditions can quickly make tubes or small jigs the best option.
Once the last wave of smallmouths begin spawning, the fast fishing of the prespawn has passed. Summer patterns begin after spawning duties are complete, offering good fishing on the same flats, but usually less predictable than before the spawn.
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