I had the pleasure of representing my team for the first time at the NY State Club Team event this past weekend.  3 days of fishing including the practice on Friday.  I am in awe of that body of water.  The kind of smallmouth that come out of that water was absolutely amazing.  How they fish for them in this current was extremely impressive and I had to learn fast just to keep up with my boaters.

 

Couple of lessons learned from that trip worth sharing ...

 

1 - There is NO such thing as a heavy weight in that body of water.  At times I was using 3/4oz finesse tube weights and Drop shot weights.

2 - Fishing the bottom from a boat with heavy current and wind was all about boat control and bottom contact.  Boat control being paramount around those shoals on the western end.  I got a 1st hand taste of it with my boater on day one who handed me the reigns on the trolling motor through a few of our drifts.

3 - The largemouth bass look like bait in comparison to the Smallies.  The lunkers for the tournament was a monster 5.9lb and 6.3 lb.  On day 2 I only caught 3 smallies but they averages over 3.5lbs each for a 10.77lb bag.

4 - You have never drop shotted before until you fish it on this water and with this drifting technique.  It caught all my Smallmouth.  The keys for me were a minimum of 1/2oz tungsten round ball, a leader that was between 1 - 2 feet long, controlling your drift over these shoals, and keeping constant contact with the bottom.  The bottom we worked averaged around 30 feet.  Some areas were well into the 50 FOW range.

5 - Gobies are annoying ... they peck like mad.  I never had so many phantom hooksets in my life.  LOL

 

Don't know if any of you were there but thought I would share my experience with the group.

http://www.lakeontariooutdoors.com/stories/news-story/proven-system-for-st-lawrence-river-smallmouth/

 

HA! - this pretty much sums up what I did ... Seems like everyone was doing it.  Those who happened to be on the right shoals were rewarded with 15 - 24 lb bags of Smallies.  Others struggled to make a limit.  One additional observation I will share is that what the current does on top and in the depths can be different as we found out on Sunday.  Add wind moving you a different direction and you have a boat management challenge.

 

You might be in the right area but if you can't control the boat through it you drift your opportunities away.

 

Good electronics with maps helped keep us on course.

I just fished a tournament Sunday with my club on Lake Erie. It is a completely different monster to fish for smallies in these bodies of water than what a lot of people are used to. After a rough morning start we hit a limit of largemouth, all of which were culled with smallies, because like you said, they looked like baitfish...