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Bottom Contact (Guest Article)
Hit them where they live
by Dave Motes

When the river comes up, or fish go deep, the one constant is the bottom. Once you have resolved questions of what kind of bottom to fish over, and found the kind of area you like--chunk rock is best, with sand and gravel next and bedrock and silt the least desireable--you only have to touch the bottom. It isn't as easy as it sounds.

Why? Simple. Jigs and almost any other lure that is bottom oriented is going to make smallies think of crayfish. Smallies think of crayfish all the time anyway, and usually they aren't very sophisticated about lure shape, color, and size, so you generally only have to get in the ballpark of look and behavior to get a bass to strike. And crayfish hardly ever venture away from the bottom. If you want your lure to be mistaken for a crayfish by a smallie, keep it on the bottom.

Also, in dirty water, the bottom is the one constant in a bass's world. Though instincts and other senses guide fish very well, they are most comfortable in visual range of the bottom. If visibility is six inches, fish will be six inches from the bottom. If they are in a feeding mode in that situation, they may even spend a lot of time inclined forward, actually looking at the bottom, waiting for some crawdad to appear. That's going to make most other lures, and any jig that isn't in that six inches, a lot less likely as a food source. An exception would be noisy lures such as spinnerbaits and crankbaits, those that emit a regular pulse which will allow fish to vector in on a bait.

This also explains why smallies are so triggered by a falling lure. A rising crayfish isn't natural, but a falling one is, and it's getting away. If the critter gets to that chunk rock, it's probably gone--so a jig falling by a smallmouth will nearly always trigger a strike. With current, most falling lures are actually angling downward, and that is realistic. It's a good strike, too; a solid 'tunk' that is well transmitted, even through line bent by wind or pushed by current. Even slack line will hop visibly when a fish takes a falling lure. Another jig strike occurs when fish pin the lure to the bottom then slurp it--a very subtle, difficult strike that can be tough to detect, most common in cold water. That's another lesson.

There are two kinds of falling lures: slow fallers and fast fallers. Both will work at the same time but one is generally going to outperform the other--so try both. Slow fallers are intended to linger on the fall, staying in the strike zone. They do this by some combination of water resistance and weight. Hula grubs and large jig-and-pigs are examples of this, and small plastic worms fall into the category when rigged in certain ways. The advantage of a slow-faller comes in dirty water--slower fallers emit more vibration that is perceptible to fish, and can show a larger profile--ideal in conditions when visibility is poor. Fast fallers can be streamlined or sparse jig-and-chunks and grubs, but the mac daddy of fast falling lures is the tube. Tubes have the advantage of falling fast, which will trigger strikes from fish that see them. Once in rock, tubes don't perform as well as jigs with weed guards, which is why the tube should be thought of as a dropping lure, not a hopping lure.

A secondary consideration is the falling action, which has led to the success of a new category of lures: "do nothing" plastics. (I know, they've been around a long time, but we river anglers are sometimes a bit slow.) Do-nothing lures actually take on a certain action or motion when falling, which adds to the appeal of the falling lure. Yamamoto Senkos are a great example--when sinking they take on an unbelievable seductive wobble or wave. Very picky fish can be tempted with them, but for general use they are too expensive and too delicate a lure for river smallies.

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"A rising crayfish isn't natural, but a falling one is, and it's getting away. If the critter gets to that chunk rock, it's probably gone--so a jig falling by a smallmouth will nearly always trigger a strike."

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Anglers can cross the line between slow and fast by varying head weight on jigs. A heavy head on a hula grub will streamline it and drop it faster in swift current; a light head in a tube give it a sexy spiral fall and, if rigged right, can make it fall horizontally rather than head-down. In any event, the key considerations for fishing such lures are what I think of as a three-dimensional clock. On my clock, my target--the place I have decided to hit by reading the water--is always at the center, and the current always flows from 12 0'clock. Cast upstream--from 6--and you fish your lure differently than from 9 or 3 or 12. The thing you must do is vary the tension and reel rate of your retrieve to give the lure free but felt fall. That means that it falls freely but with enough tension on the line, with wind and current factored in, to fall as vertically as possible. Fishing downstream, from 12, that means that you may have to drop line to the lure. Fishing upstream, from 6, you will probably have to take up line quite quickly while still maintaining contact with the lure. From 9 or 3 no reeling is generally needed but rod control becomes important.

Then the lure takes bottom. It's critical that the lure only rap or pop the bottom, not linger there. Tough, especially when the bottom contours are sharp and varied, as they are in our river. Watch the falling line and "feel" the lure hit--usually it's a very dampened bump from rock. In slow current the line will take a deeper bend when the lure feels the bottom; in faster current it may not change at all. By reading the water an experienced angler will be able to anticipate the depth and position of the lure. If you let it rest on the bottom the current and the rocks will conspire to drop it into a crack, and you will be hung up, weedguard or no. A good jig fisherman will be able to start the lure rising on the lift just as it hits the bottom, and lift it just enough to be effective.

The second stage is to give the lure a lift--not a jerking jig, and not a "crawl", but a gentle lift--then let it fall again. It's important to remember that the current will displace the lure in some way from its original position at this time, so even fishing downstream you will be covering new water. You will take some fish on the retrieve, and on the lift, and from a stationary position on the bottom, but for smallmouth it's the fall that matters.