Its been raining heavily hear for the past three days and the local river is fast flowing and chocolate milk in color, but i was getting stir crazy not having been out this week so i decided to go give it a try anyways. It turned out to be the best day of fishing ive had this year. I caught six smallies the smallest being 1 1/2lbs and the biggest 3 1/2lbs. Not the biggest fish but im new to the area and to smallmouth fishing in general so I caught a new PB smallie four times today(previous was a tad under 2lbs). I fished a dbl colorado blade spinner bait, threw it into heavy current and brought it into slack water, they all seemed to hammer it right on the edge of the current and slack water. So my question is do any of you fellas find the "worst conditions" favorable?

Congrats!

Bank, when growing up in New Orleans I fished the Audubon Park lagoon with my cousins for bluegills.

 

I will always remember the day we fished the lagoon with a big thunderstorm heading our way.

 

The wind was blowing; there were almost whitecaps on the water; and we clobbered the bluegills.

 

Every cast produced a bluegill. Talk about fun.

 

That day taught me one lesson: when the front moves in the fishing can be fantastic.

 

As to you hitting the water when everyone else was home, great move!  You have now learned where the smallies hold when the water is dirty.

 

Always remember your experience and parlay it into better smallie fishing in the future when the water conditions are more suitable to fishing.

Rising river levels have always produced for me.  Big noisy baits like wide wobbling rattling cranks and big bladed spinnerbaits always seem to do the trick.

As a rule, the biggest fish are where it's the last convenient to fish, lol.

I fish post frontal for the same reason you just found out

plus there is usually noone else there.. u get the water all to yerself

if you can find the fish, its a smorgasborg

if you cant its real slow going

Two of the best days I've ever had fishing for smallies were consecutive days in April last year. Temps in the 40's combined with a steady rain made for a couple of the most miserable days on the water I've ever had........or at least it would have been if the fish weren't DESTROYING a jerkbait. The second day we easily caught 100 between two of us, and all except a couple were caught on a jerkbait.

Yes, that day really taught me alot! I have been fishing this river for about a yeah and as stated above the biggest i had caught before was under 2lbs. I went fishing more to just cast(its soothing to me) and to get out of dinner with in-laws lol. I had walked at least two miles of river bank fishing any slack water i could find, and hadn't caught anything. I found a spot that a big tree laying out into fast current creating a pool of slack water behind it and since the river was high the pool was full of flooded grass. I caught all six fish out of that small area with the biggest ones being the furthest out in the current. I think high, fast, muddy water is my new favorite to fish because i feel like it will make the fish easier to pinpoint. Do i have the right idea?

The great thing about high water is it will concentrate the fish.  Once you have them patterned, it can be real easy to find them.  I've had  days we would  have struck out if we had given up easy, but after a few hours searching  came up with big pods of fish that more than made the day.