Our Outdoors: Six Spring Smallie Spaces
By Nick Simonson
Smallmouth bass in spring stake out premier spawning sites, with the biggest fish getting the best pieces of territory. Typically, the shallows where they make their beds have many structural elements and knowing what to key in on as these fish make their moves will help connect you with more bass this spring. What follows is a super six-pack of smallmouth haunts to explore with your favorite jig, tube or soft plastic this season.
On the Rocks
Areas of rip rap, boulders, and naturally occurring rock are smallmouth magnets. These spaces warm up quickly in the spring sunlight and attract micro-organisms and small aquatic insects along with baitfish and crayfish. As a result, smallmouth bass are drawn to them as well. When smallies have a nice nook between rocks, or an open area of sand or gravel in a stretch of rip rap, they can be found there in spring setting up for the spawn. Cast over these places with cone-head jigs and Texas-rigged plastics rigged with a bullet weight to avoid getting stuck in the small spaces between rocks.
Good Wood
Downed trees and brush, perhaps pulled in and piled up by recent high waters from record spring snowfall and its subsequent melt, also provide cover for pre-spawn smallies and a place to find a break from the current and set up an adjacent spawning site. The wood has plenty of attraction for the food chain elements addressed above and provides enough cover on at least one side for smallmouth to stage against. Aside from snagging on newer branches and bark, be careful casting around limbs and snaggy sections with jigs and soft plastics. Texas rig a plastic stick, like a Senko, to avoid hooking woody obstructions and instead catch fish.
Them’s The Breaks
Anywhere a river or lake rises up from the depths and provides bass with a quick transition from basin to spawning shallows is a good stretch of topography to explore. When fish are pushed deep by spring cold fronts, check the deep side first and then work shallower as things warm again and smallies head back to the shallows. Find points or inside curves that serve as onramps out of the main lake or river channel to adjacent skinny water. Work the bottoms with football jigs and bucktail jigs, and slowly cast countdown-style crankbaits to locate fish that are suspended in the column.
Docked
Any docks that are in the water early, or are hardy, permanent structures that survive the winter and ice off, are worth being cast at from all angles in the early goings, as they provide structure and shade that fish relate to. Additionally, they are a superior ambush point for items of food flowing by in river current or the first baitfish and panfish that come shallow in spring. Cast jigs and tubes around these structures to find smallmouth bass this season.
Bridge the Divide
Bridges of all sizes draw smallies in spring. From the depths around the center pilings where fish can go for cold-front cover and safety in high light hours, to the shallows and debris that usually settles in the shallow corners underneath, every piece of a bridge is worth a cast for smallies. Upstream pilings on rivers tend to hold on to deadfalls, branches and other structure that washes down in spring and provides cover for fish in addition to the concrete supports. Work them over with a drop-shot rig or tube on an insert jighead to trigger wary bass in these locations.
Go With The Flow
Inflowing water is also a key element for spring smallies. Creeks, springs, draws funneling spring rainwater, and even culverts dumping runoff into a main body can pull smallies up shallow as the spawn nears. Work these points of entry over with suspending crankbaits, jerkbaits, and soft plastics in an effort to cover water quickly and connect with fish. Follow up with a slower presentation if a bass bites but the hook doesn’t connect.
Add It Up
The best smallie spots in spring combine some or all of these elements in close proximity to one another. Knowing what to look for and identifying the structure and the other elements that come with fast fishing are points to hang on to in any journal or GPS. Make a note of these six forms of structure and others this spring in relation to the smallies you catch and odds are you can return to those spots year after year around this same time for more spring success with bronzebacks…in our outdoors.
Our Outdoors: Stocked Trout Springboard
Our Outdoors: Stocked Trout Springboard
By Nick Simonson
Spring brings with it a change in the air, and where rain begins to pour down to bring those May flowers out on the landscape and fill the banks of streams, ponds and lakes with a recharge of something other than snow, so too come other additions to those waters. Stocked trout are placed by state fish and wildlife agencies this time of year to add to the angling variety found throughout the upper Midwest, and while many rainbows, browns and other species of trout are added simply as a put-and-take fishery, these early spring fishing options provide a springboard into different forms of angling, especially for younger anglers or those new to fishing.
While walleyes remain the region’s most popular fish to angle for, and crappies are a massive springtime draw as they make their spawning moves into the shallows, stocked trout can fill the time in between. With Minnesota’s stream trout season just opened, and the stocking of trout in prairie lakes and reservoirs coming up in the Dakotas in the next few weeks, these options help introduce young or inexperienced anglers to a fish that is often aggressive, can be caught a variety of ways, and provides a fun fight at the end of the line.
Foremost, stocked trout of any stripe or spot are often hungry right after they hit the water, having lived in a hatchery for the past few months and then being transported across the countryside. Shortly after their ejection from the tanker truck and a bit of acclimation to their new home, they’ll take to a chunk of nightcrawler speared on a hook (where legal, check restrictions for each specific water), small jigs or spoons and spinners. Simply connect a young angler with one of these options based on skill level and have them get casting for these introduced fish. No matter where a novice might be in his or her particular learning curve, there are many ways to catch trout and they are all fun.
On lighter rods, these fish help teach fight management and utilizing four-pound test can help young anglers master a spinning combo. This includes tuning the drag based on the size of the fish, which may vary depending on their time of stocking and the size class of the trout that are placed in the water. A 16-to-18-inch trout can be a fun battle on light tackle, and learning how to keep the rod tip high and the drag set to a level that prevents line breakage will help new anglers learn those tools of the trade that will carry over to all types of fishing.
Additionally, for those first time fly anglers, stocked trout in a small seasonal stream, a pit or a pond, can help reward them for a winter of learning how to cast and practicing their new found art in a gym or other training area. Since these stockers take to most flies that are in that “half-inch, brown, and buggy” category – as they often match up with the pellets and feed the trout were issues in their rearing tanks – simple flies like pheasant tail nymphs, gold-ribbed hare’s ears, small woolly buggers, and woolly worms are enough to get the job done and help increase the odds of a positive connection. This in turn provides immediate reward for those novices’ exploration of a new form of fishing.
While the white fades from the edges of our streams and lakes, a splash of color is the perfect way to kick off spring. Find it in the glimmer of the pink-and-metallic blue of a rainbow trout or the gold, black and bronze of a brown trout placed in a water near you. While you’re at it, take along someone new to try some of these proven tactics or expand their horizons on the fly. Share what you know and all that stocked trout provide for both the next generation of anglers and this fun and exciting spring happening occurring now…in our outdoors.
Our Outdoors: Spring for Crappies
Our Outdoors: Spring for Crappies
By Nick Simonson
One of the earliest fish available to anglers, even in the latest of springs, is the crappie. They’re ubiquitous, found on flows of all sorts from small farm ponds and mesotrophic rivers of the Dakota prairies, to the wandering chains of lakes in Minnesota. In the latter state, where pike and walleye fishing is bounded by dates on the calendar, crappies provide early access to long-rod angling after an extended winter. In the former, they may be available year round as locations like Nelson Lake kick out big slabs all winter thanks to a warm water discharge.
Wherever you seek these speckled panfish this spring when the ice finally gives way, one adage should be your guide: keep it simple. Crappies are the everyman of angling. They are bigger than bluegills to provide a tasty and rewarding meal, smaller and less touted than walleyes that draw the attention of many, and far easier to catch than muskies, that’s for sure. As a result, a light or medium-light jigging rod will get the job done when angling for them. Spool a smaller spinning reel with four-pound-test monofilament line, and the basis for the best possible crappie fishing is quickly in hand.
Even with our modern inflationary trends, crappie tackle remains the most affordable on the market and in the sporting good aisle. Twenty dollars will likely fill a tacklebox with the jigs, tubes, grubs and other smaller soft plastics to fuel a spring and summer’s worth of crappie fishing. Go-to offerings remain 1/16 ounce insert heads that slide neatly into any one of a variety of colored two-inch tubes, and some ballhead jigs that the plastics can simply be threaded onto. Add in a package or two of two-inch twister tails and perhaps a Beetle Spin or Road Runner jig option and a few krystal flash jigs and there’s not much else that’s needed to catch crappies, besides finding them.
Even that part of the equation isn’t hard to calculate. You may have noted in the last week or two, that despite the daytime temperatures still struggling to get above freezing that a good deal of melting still occurs from the heightened sun angle and increased strength from its more direct rays as the season shifts. The same phenomenon occurs once the ice is off of a water as well. Northern bays and inlets are the first portions of a water to warm up each spring, simply due to the fact that they receive the most radiation from the increasing sunlight every day. As a result, crappies make their springtime spawning movements toward these areas, as they are the warmest and most hospitable to their efforts. Focus on these spaces to find the biggest fish, and certainly the highest concentration of crappies. Make a note of it in your journal, or drop a waypoint on the GPS to come back year after year for fast spring action.
Other elements that impact spring crappie fishing often include the presence of dark bottoms and structure. In those darker bays, where perhaps muck and mud absorb and hold the radiant energy of the sun a bit better, things get warmer faster. Additionally, structure such as sunken trees, deadfalls leading out from shore into the water, early-placed docks, and emergent weeds and aquatic plants such as lily pad stands, pencil reeds, or flooded cattails, will hold crappies as they stage to spawn or begin their nest building process. With the use of polarized sunglasses, it’s easy to pick out the slow-moving fins and tails of crappies holding in these shallow spaces, and a well-placed cast of a tube should trigger a strike. In a shallow-drifting boat however, don’t get too close or those fish will spook and either retreat further into the vegetation or dash out into the depths.
Crappie fishing is one of the most fun adventures that spring can bring. The males are often dressed up in their deepest hues of the season, with some black crappies running so deep with ebony that much of the green and white in their scales has been replaced with their spawning shades. Even male white crappies take on a darker tone as their vertical bars blacken with the rush of spring-induced hormones. The bite can be fast and furious, and some of the biggest and best looking fish of the year can be caught as well. Keep things simple in terms of tackle and know where to start your quest for some of the most enjoyable openwater angling of the year…in our outdoors.
Our Outdoors: Smells Like Success?
Our Outdoors: Smells Like Success?
By Nick Simonson
I’m not a huge believer in scents when it comes to angling. Sure, I’ve owned my share of scented plastics, and purchased more than a few packages of specially formulated baits to use both on the ice and in open water. However, my fishing exploits don’t often tap into those niches where a special scent is that something needed to seal the deal with a fish on the other end of the line. Rarely do I find myself angling for catfish, and but once a year, if I’m lucky, am I sitting through the chill of a cloudy spring day on the Rainy River for lake sturgeon. Rather, more often than not, I’m fishing for those mainstream fish – walleyes, crappies, pike and bass, that don’t often require a scent line to set off a strike.
Now, I’m a strong believer in salt-impregnated plastics for the latter of those species. The first lure I launch for both largemouth and smallmouth bass in the spring is a four-inch plastic tube loaded with salt. I do so, not so much because of that additive, but rather, it’s the brand I’ve been most loyal to for the past twenty years of angling and the ingredient has always been part of their secret recipe. Additionally, those same baits are scented with garlic, which I don’t know if it makes a difference to a big spring bronzeback or bucketmouth, but I know it does to me. Like Pavlov’s dog, my mouth begins salivating with the first inhale of a newly opened bag of the baits and my thumbpad preemptively goes raw with the thought of all of the fish I’ll be lip landing in the coming float downstream.
For walleyes, crappies and pike, which rely heavily on their vision to pick up prey and eat them, those plastics and other offerings rarely include an additive of any sort: salt, scent, liquid or otherwise. Spoons for pike are obviously all about the reaction to the flash and flutter. Jigs and twisters for walleyes have a similar tantalizing motion. Even those two-inch tubes for crappies more often than not are just simply plastisol without any additions. In the driving lane of the spring angling world, it’s these offerings alone – or tipped with a minnow, and later a crawler – that do all the attracting. For my purposes, investing in sprays, bottles, or dip jars containing scents and other solutions designed to attract fish is most often money wasted. While there may be a place for such additives, my tacklebox has seen one too many tipped over jars or half-opened bags leak their contents into a permanent odor source in its compartments to justify any more.
For those who pursue catfish or sturgeon, both fish well known for their ability to pick up scents from a great distance away, such an option may be more appealing when the rancid deliciousness of cut bait, chicken liver or a gob of slowly-leaking nightcrawlers needs an added boost. With the sensitive cells on their barbels and in their entire taste-and-smell system, every additive may be an advantage. Like so many other aspects of the outdoors, tactics and tried-and-true offerings often come down the preferred pursuits and experiences and lessons learned over time on the water.
So, as you kill some more of the time granted by this extended winter and are wandering the aisles of your favorite tackle shop or sporting goods department, staring down those somewhat strange sprays, soaks and supplements for your first springtime outing, take them with a grain of salt (even if it’s already included in the formula). There are places and Pisces that may require a shot of something special, but in most cases such a scent is unlikely a necessity for success…in our outdoors.