Smallmouth Bass

Smallmouth bass are bronze to olive-brown with dark vertical bars along the sides, red-brown eyes and three dark bars radiating back from the eye across the cheek. The jaw extends only to the middle of the eye, unlike the largemouth, whose jaw reaches past it, and the dorsal fin is continuous with a shallow notch rather than nearly separated. Color shifts with habitat: river fish are often dark and heavily barred, while deep-lake fish can be pale gold.

Native to the Great Lakes, St. Lawrence and upper Mississippi basins and the Ohio and Tennessee river systems, smallmouth have been spread by stocking to clear, cool water across the US, from the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Northwest to New England and the Ozarks. They thrive at 60 to 70 F (16 to 21 C) and are most abundant in rocky lakes with clear water and in rivers with current, gravel and boulders. Lake Erie, the Great Lakes bays and northern Minnesota and Ontario lakes grow the biggest fish, while Tennessee River reservoirs like Pickwick and Dale Hollow produce the heaviest.

Smallmouth are crayfish and baitfish specialists that relate tightly to rock, current and depth changes. In rivers they hold behind boulders, in eddies and at the heads and tails of pools; in lakes they roam rock reefs, points and gravel flats, moving deep in summer and suspending over basins to chase smelt, alewives and gobies. They feed most actively at dawn and dusk and under wind and clouds, and spawn in May and June when water reaches the low 60s F, with males guarding gravel nests in 3 to 10 feet.

Few freshwater fish fight as hard for their size: a 3-pound smallmouth will jump three times and dig for bottom. River smallmouth in a canoe or wading, Great Lakes giants on drop-shots and the fall feeding frenzy in northern lakes are all world-class fisheries, and a 5-pound smallmouth is a trophy almost anywhere.