I went to Green Top's opening on October 10 in Glen Allen, Virginia and found some $15 In-Fisherman DVDs for $5 each and I purchased four of them.

In the DVD Finess Bass Tactics they talk about fishing for smallmouth using a bobber and a hair jig.

Just about every cast they caught a smallie.

The set up is a bobber and a hair jig of your choice about 3 feet under the bobber. I think they were using a 3/8 ounce jig

This is a cold water presentation for lakes and since these guys are from the north I guess it works about 11 months of the year.

Just thought I would share it with you all in case you are fishing fro smallies this winter on a lake with water temps between 40* and 50*.

Float-n-Fly

Triton Mike wrote this for us a few years ago: http://www.bassresou...loat-n-fly.html

Very interesting that this is effective and it originated from crappie fishing. I used to target crappie before switching to bass, and as I've been digging deeper into finesse techniques, I've been seeing the bass lure preference isn't that different from crappie. Bass fishermen have different techniques, but the effective lures are similar. The bobby garland baby shad is one of the go-to lures for crappie (the bottom lure pictured below), and the berkley twitchtail minnow (second image) is basically an upsized version.

This thread and that story has me wanting to try fishing a twitchtail dropshot under a float and see what happens. That's just upsized crappie fishing right there.

Float n fly is an awesome cold water technique for all black bass species. You can use baits other than hair jigs too. There is a local pond I fish that is fed by an underground aquifer. They set it up so the water is pumped in through a small waterfall. In the Winter when every other body of water is iced over there is always some open water where the waterfall spills into the pond (the water from underground is a constant 50 degrees year round). Throwing a 3 inch curly tailed grub under a small float and letting it move along with the current from the waterfall produces bass all winter long. I have caught fish out there when the air temp is in the single digits. It's pretty cool being out there with steam coming off the water and the fish when you catch them.

If my memory serves, the world record smallie was caught using a float and fly.

If my memory serves, the world record smallie was caught using a float and fly.

No, deep crank:

http://www.bassmaster.com/node/96856

just a fly/light hairjig, not float. mid summer at the holler back when it was fertile.

scratch that.............. bomer crank. second largest was caught on small jig