Targeting Kentucky Lake smallmouth in early summer

September 13, 2008 by admin

Kentucky Lake Guide Dave Stewart nets a smallmouth for the author.

Before we went down to fish with Dave Stewart, a guide on Kentucky Lake, my fishing buddy called one of his brothers for some advice on where to stay.

“What are you going to fish for?” his brother, a long-time Kentucky Lake angler, asked at the end of the converstation.

“Smallmouth.”

“You mean largemouth,” his brother said.

“No, we’re going after smallmouth.”

Stewart wasn’t surprised later when he heard the conversation rehashed.

“A lot of people are thinking about largemouth because that’s what the laek is known for,” Stewart said. “I spend a lot of time convincing people to go after smallmouth.”

Stewart, who retired from the military and started guiding in the mid-1990s, has developed a busy service as one of the few who focus mainly on bass fishing.

” A lot of people who come here don’t focus on smallmouth,” he said. “The locals have picked up on it. But those who have come from out of state don’t even know they’re in here.”

Knowing that fact has made a difference for a number of anglers, including Stewarts clients who are preparing for tournaments.

Stewart switched to crankbaits for Kentucky smallmouth after noticing that smallmouth were reacting to a topwater chug bait only when it was moved rapidly. His hunch paid off. For the next hour, smallies hammered the faster-moving bait.

“In early spring tournaments, smallmouth are usually in the top 5 of the weight category of any tournament and most of the time win tournaments. The same happens in the fall.”

It doesn’t take long to convert a client.

“When you mention smallmouth, their eyebrows raise and they usually say, ‘I’ve never caught a smallmouth.’ It’s a great thing when somebody catches one when they’ve never caught one before.”

It’s not too bad when yo have, either.

On the day we went out with Stewart, we pulled in at least a half dozen over three pounds. Not bad anywhere, though Stewart said it was slow for Kentucky Lake.

Our day started around 7 a.m. fishing a Pop-R, a chugging topwater bait. Stewart instructed us to popt it hard. He wanted to get their attention.

He noticed that the faster we retrieved, the more likely we were to get a strike.

So we switched to crankbaits _ rootbeer colored Bandit 200 Seires and a Norman’s rootbeer Little N.

“The key there is something I always try to preach to people,” he siad. “Let the fish tell you what they want and then go to it. This time they wanted a faster-moving bait.”

The switch paid off. We spent the next hour catching fish on the crankbaits.

When that slowed down, we switched to Snoozer Road Kill Cammo and Smoke Purple tubes, and we stuck with them the rest of the day.

We were targeting fishing that were chasing bass fry and drum fry in an area on the Land Between the Lakes side of the lake called Sugar Bay. There was no need to leave, except for food and sleep. Throughout the day, we bounced Texas-rigged tubes off the bottom in the back of the bay and on rocky points.

Stewart has two fewer people to convince about Kentucky Lake’s smallmouth.

You can find Stewart at http://www.kentuckylakeguide.com/ You can also call him at 270-354-5039

By Chris Poore

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