(Editor's note: The following is the latest installment in a series of fishing tips presented by The Bass University. Check back each Friday for a new tip.)
If both largemouths and smallmouths are available in a tournament situation, John Murray said that in the vast majority of cases he thinks he has a better chance of winning with green fish over brown. Nevertheless, there remain tournament venues like the Great Lakes where smallmouths have almost always won for decades. That hasn’t changed, but some of the gear used to catch them has.
He still relies on old-school tools like a jerkbait, spinnerbait, tube and Carolina Rig, but they’re not the only arrows in his quiver. He’s expanded his lure selection for bronzebacks, and now instead of carrying eight basic boxes, he often has 16 or 20.
A jerkbait will certainly still catch them, and Murray has a basic rule for the ones he chooses: “I want gaudy. I want ugly. I want bright. I don’t want to match any hatch.” That extremism extends to his retrieves, too. With largemouths the pause or delay may be critical, but with smallmouths oftentimes you just have to retrieve “as fast as you can jerk it.”
With spinnerbaits, it’s the “same idea.” You can’t reel it too fast for them, and if you try a slow roll, they may follow it for a while, but will eventually fade away. He likes hot pink and chartreuse, and noted that one of the best colors at Sturgeon Bay is “cole slaw” – white blades and a white and orange skirt.
The tube is one of the most productive lures anywhere that smallmouths swim, and while it can be rigged with a 1/2- or 3/4-ounce head and snapped violently off the bottom, a slower retrieve like “the old Erie drag” also pays off when they’re not aggressive. While a jighead gets the call most of the time, on waters like the Thousand Islands where the fish live around grass edges, he’ll Texas-rig it. He keeps his colors simple – most often watermelon gold or watermelon purple – but encourages anglers to keep five or 10 basic shades on hand, everything from black to chartreuse to a shad color, just in case the fish get fussy.
The downside of the tube is that it results in a lot of lost fish, especially the big girls. That’s where the Carolina Rig excels. If a fish gets hooked, it’s usually coming in the boat. He’s “not too stuck” on any particular lure, but he’s a firm believer in tungsten weights, which allow him to feel subtle bottom changes.
Those are the old-school approaches. Leading the charge of the new wave is the dropshot, which Murray discovered around 2000. You’ll still lose a lot of fish, he said, “but not as many as on a tube.” More importantly, it can be fished at any depth, in current, with a wide variety of baits, and it simply gets bites. He’s still searching for the perfect hook, and one of the ones he likes best is the Roboworm Rebarb model, which he threads on rather than rigging it Texas-style. He uses a cylinder style weight on grass edges, but around rock he likes the feel of a teardrop-style weight better.
Another new category of lure that he treasures is the spybait – small sinking-minnow imitators with propellers. This tool is deadly when the fish are lethargic and want something “barely moving.” With a long cast in open water, hookups are not a problem as the bass tend to engulf the whole bait. Be sure to fish it above them, as “smallmouths love to come up and get stuff.”
While the spybait allows him to cover water, the Neko rig does not. It’s made to remain in one place – whether that be sight fishing in 2 feet of water or doodling in 50 feet – and to torture bass into biting. “It’s a patience technique,” he advised.
If you want to learn more of Murray’s thoughts on smallmouths, including his tips about dipping dyes and scents, check out his full video, available only by subscribing to The Bass University TV.
