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Smallies have me jumping for joy
If there is anything in fishing as exhilarating as experiencing a smallmouth bass cartwheel over a topwater lure, I’m not sure my heart is up for it.
At dawn last Saturday, with the coolness of night still in the air and not even a hint of a breeze to ruffle the mirror finish on Lake Milton, I glided to a stop near a rock-bottom area notorious for early morning smallmouths. I picked up the rod to which I’d tied a Sammy walk-the-dog plug and fired a cast.
Two twitches into the retrieve, a 3-pound smallmouth jumped completely over the lure. I can still see it a week later. As I squinted into the rising sun, the spray was like a halo of diamonds around the silhouetted smallie.
As idyllic as that sounds, we had a problem. The fish didn’t connect. Whoa, that was disappointing. Fish reacting to a topwater lure is top-shelf action, but when they actually take the bait, it’s a whole other ball game.
But a moment later, another fish rolled up on the bait and fought in flopping leaps all the day back to the BassCat. A final leap proved more than the trebles could hold, and the fish streaked to freedom.
For the next 30 minutes, one out of every 20 or so casts resulted in a smallmouth bass pulling the Sammy under. The action subsided after the sun cleared the treetops, but not before I’d had enough fun to carry me through the balance of a routine day on Milton.
The Sammy is a high-end lure, one that I don’t tie on willy-nilly considering the fact that Milton is full of big muskies with line-cutting teeth and gill plates. To risk an $18 lure means an angler has to have a lot of confidence that the investment is worth it.
It is. The side-to-side action that the Sammy produces when twitched in just the right fashion is too tempting for a bass to resist. It’s my go-to bait when I get a chance to fish in the 30 minutes before and after sunrise.
Other topwaters work on Youngstown-area smallmouth bass, too. I like a splashy popper when the bass are excited by other feeding game fish. It’s also a good choice when the current is moving either by gravity or wind.
A third topwater choice is the venerable buzzbait. A propeller on the upper trailing arm of the wire-framed bait kicks up a gurgling fuss, leaving a trail of bubbles that can actually pull in bass as they look for what’s creating the disturbance.
Buzzbait bites are often very explosive. Sometimes, however, they are barely noticeable. I’ve had times when I just noticed that I no longer could see or feel the buzzbait, so I set the hook into a big bass that was swimming toward the boat with my lure in its jaws.
But it’s the explosions that causes anglers to buy buzzbaits. During a day of smallmouth fishing when they are biting buzzers, it’s possible to actually wear out a bait. A good-sized smallmouth can twist a steel-wire lure into a pretzel shape.
Do that all day, of course, and you will eventually fatigue the wire to its breaking point. That’s a price worth paying when the fish are up and active.
Milton is a great place for topwater smallmouth action. Berlin is a close second when it comes to Youngstown-area smallmouth action. The Mahoning River, where anglers can gain access below Berlin and Milton and in Youngstown, Warren and Lowellville, also is a good bet for surface smashing smallies.
More good news for those who want to try their skills for bass on top is that the season is still young. The fishing will be good for the balance of the summer – especially this year with cooler-than-normal water – and on into the fall.