Next Saturday is the opening day of trout season, of course, and for most of my life, trout fishing was my primary focus this time of year.
That all changed somewhat about seven or eight years ago when I began fishing for smallmouth bass on the Juniata River regularly during the early spring. Now, I have fished for smallmouths just as long as I have fished for trout, but trout were always the springtime priority and chasing bass came later, usually early in the summer. Basically, two things occurred that caused me to reorder those priorities.
First, I found out how good the springtime bass fishing had become on the upper Juniata so close to home. Sometime around the middle to the end of March, the larger river bass awake from their winter doldrums and go into pre-spawn mode, which entails feeding heavily to put on weight and strength to see them through the rigors and stress of spawning. And big smallmouths on a feeding binge is about as good as it gets in freshwater fishing.
About that same time, I first met and fished with Ken Penrod, a bass-fishing expert who guides on the Susquehanna and lower Juniata rivers from early March until early May. Since then, I have fished with Penrod once or twice each spring and always learn another trick or to from him each time.
The key to catching river smallmouths now is finding them, and to find them, you need to find their food.
The preferred forage this time of year is baitfish, which will congregate in large schools in places out of the strong currents of the main river channel.
Shoreline eddies and similar current breaks will often hold lots of minnows, and if the minnows are there, the bass are sure to be close by. Smallmouths, too, will congregate in favorable lies at the edges of the main river channel and near food sources, so it is not uncommon to catch several bass from the same spot.
The best overall lure for river smallmouths this time of year is without a doubt the soft-plastic tube jig. These versatile baits come in a range of sizes and a virtually endless array of colors. Since they first appeared on the market around the mid-1980s, tubes have become top producer wherever smallmouths are found.
For river bass, I usually fish either the standard 3 1/2-inch models or the smaller “teaser” tubes, which are 2 3/4 inches long. Since I am looking for larger bass this time of year, I will typically start with the standard size tubes.
If they aren’t producing or the fish aren’t holding the bait long enough to get a proper hookset, I’ll then downsize to the teaser style.
The simplest way to rig both standard and teaser tubes is on a jighead — heads with a 3/0 hook for the standard tubes and heads with a 1/0 or 2/0 hook for teasers. With all the water we’ve had this spring, river levels have remained up, so 1/8-ounce jigheads have been necessary. As the currents subside later in the spring, 1/16-ounce jigheads will be sufficient.
Once I became a tube fan, I found myself using two basic colors most of the time: green pumpkin and smoke/purple flake. But since tubes come in so many great colors, I have been experimenting with all sorts of different shades and have found several good ones. Instead of plain old green pumpkin, I tried some in that color that were spiced up some orange glitter and did well with them last summer and fall.
But my top producer last spring and so far this year is a special color I found when fishing with my friend Penrod last year. The color is called “Buzzkill,” and it is the concoction of John Cunningham who operates the Riverfront Campground in Duncannon and sells the lures in his tackle store there.
The base color is an amber or root beer shade, sprinkled with black, green and a few purple flakes, and one of them is in the mouth of the bass in the accompanying photo. I’m not sure just what the bass think it is, but after using them for a couple of seasons now, it has more than earned its keep.
So if you have some extra time this week, you might want to get some tubes and hit the river for some smallmouths. And take it from this longtime trout fanatic. A good day of smallmouth fishing can almost make you forget about trout.