River Bass

Understanding rivers can help your fishing be more productive on lakes as well

By Randy Womack

River Bass

We had just finished Sunday dinner at grandma and Pep Pa's when dad hollered, "Okay boys, let's go to the river!" My cousins and I shot out the door and started gathering minnow seines, trottines, minnow buckets, and rods and reels. We all knew there was a tow sack already loaded in the '58 Ford. It was there from last weeks river trip. It was there for the mud holes we hit on the way to gather crawdads.
   I can say, without a doubt, some of the best times of my life were spent on a river. I pray that I can write well enough to make you appreciate rivers as much as I do. They're glorious places that need to be protected forever. They are a very important part of our ecosystem.
   If you think about it, rivers are the arteries of our lives. They come in all sizes and are scattered all over the country. The bass that live in them are pretty predictable. When you fully understand a river, and how it works, it holds the key to all other bass fishing.
   There are several different species of bass that inhabit rivers. In the US we have largemouth, smallmouth, and the Kentucky spotted bass, which was actually discovered in Alabama I believe. We also have what is called a shoal bass and Suwanne bass, which are found in the Suwanne River in Florida. In Texas, river bass are called Guadalupe bass. They are named for the river in which they live.
   No matter where you find them, bass are still bass. Whether you're fishing a river in Canada or Mexico, bass have pattern characteristics and behaviors that we can use to our advantage when fishing for them. The most important ones to remember are their use of outside and inside curves, creeks feeding into, sloughs going off of, and current breaks.
   First we'll talk about the inside and outside curves. As a river flows, the current cuts deep banks, which are called outside curves. It deposits gravel, sand and debris on the inside curves. Outside curves mostly consist of deep water, fallen trees, root systems and bigger rocks. Inside curves consist of sandbars, smaller pea gravel and shallow water flats.
   Current breaks can be any type of object that provides a substantial reduction in water flow. This can be a man-made bridge, a tree lodged in sand in the middle of a river, log jam, large boulders, or any type of fallen trees along the bank. One thing you have to remember is that fast-moving rivers are harder for bass to live in.
   Medium or slow-moving rivers are best. The number one key to fishing rivers is to find "peeper" holes. This might be a hole 10 feet deep and 30 yards long on larger rivers. It can also be 20 feet deep and run for a quarter of a mile or more. I would say that most of the time bass live and stay near these deep pools. There is an exception to this. During the spring, they will scatter and travel up sloughs and feeder creeks to spawn.
   And remember creeks and sloughs are also good areas, if they have enough depth. You want to find water that is seven to 10 feet. This will usually hold fish year round. Creeks and sloughs will be at their best in the spring as bass travel all the way to the backs of these areas. Fall can be another peak time for these areas, but fall also usually brings lower water levels and bass don't normally venture too far from the main river.
   When you run out of depth, you'll run out of fish. Most sloughs have dingy or tea-colored water. This factor alone will hold fish shallower throughout the year. A lot of these areas have flooded hardwoods such as oak trees, which cause the water to have that color. Tannic acid is the main reason. As this acid seeps out of the bark and roots of the trees, it will settle to the bottom. In these areas, most bass will be located up against the roots or around logs in 1-1/2- to 4-foot of water. If the center of the slough is eight feet deep, most bass can be found above six feet to avoid the tannic acid.
   To compensate for this positioning of the fish, it's always good to simply raise your rod tip a little higher than normal to get the bait some distance off the bottom. Lighter jigs work well for this because they fall through the strike zone slower.
   Now we'll get back to the river itself. As I said earlier, most of the time bass will hold in deeper pools during the day. Late evenings, at night or in early morning times are when you will need to fish shallower water. The inside curves will have sandbars and small pea gravel points. These are excellent places for bass to ambush bait. Two other prime feeding areas are where the river is coming into a deeper hole and where it's going out.
   Most of the time a river will be wider with shallow water just before a deeper pool. As it flows into a hole, it will usually compress or get smaller. Bass love to feed just at the front of these holes. If the water is fairly clear, you'll see the bottom just as it falls off into the hole. Another indication of a drop-off is a small line of tiny ripples on the surface. Any place where you find drop-offs of some significance are ideal ambush places for bass. On the lower end of a hole, where the river starts to widen back out, is another area where bass will be feeding.
   If you think about it, the river itself is not that complicated. You have two banks that are not usually very far apart. The number one place I always rely on is a deeper bank, where there are drifts that have fallen trees and brush piles. These banks will have root systems, rocks, and undercut banks. They will always hold a good number of fish.
   One of the most important things to remember about the current, whether it is in a river or creek, is that bass will always hold on the down-stream side of current breaks. With this in mind, most of the time the bass will be looking upstream, or just to their sides. This should give you an idea of the best way to approach fishing a river. I'm always going to slip upriver and fish ahead of myself. If the water is moving pretty good, I move out at about a 45-degree angle from where I'm fishing. What this does is give me more control over my bait. If you get directly behind a shoal or sandbar, the current carries your bait toward you too fast and you can't feel the bait.
   Always pay attention to what's going on ahead of you. It may be a raccoon on the bank or a crane standing in the water next to a drop-off. The coon may be digging for crawfish or searching for frogs or grasshoppers along the grassy bank. The thing that needs to click in your mind is that bass also eat all of these things. What the coon is not catching, he's flushing. I have seen it all my life. Animals use each other to catch their prey. That crane is not standing there looking up at the sky thinking it's a pretty day. He's there for a reason. There are minnows or some type of prey right there close. All of these things can tell you what's going on under the water.
   Since I just mentioned minnows, you should also realize that they are the mainstays of many rivers. When I was 17, an old man told me about how the minnows migrated up rivers in the fall. We all know that shad do so, but as early winter arrives they move back toward deeper water because they have a low cold water tolerance. Minnows, on the other hand, go as far as they can. Some travel hundreds of miles. One day in October as I stood above a river and looked down into the water, I saw what the old man had told me about. It's like one of those pictures where you stare at it for five minutes then it jumps out at you. I could see the sand, then the sand was moving. It was minnows, a huge line of them as far as I could see. There must have been millions of them. I have only seen this migration twice in my life. Many people never see it, so I feel fortunate to have witnessed it.

Continue to next page