Hello,

When I'm smallie fishing and the sun begins to go down, I see this:

The bass bite stops.

In that area of the river I'm aware of crappie, walleye, smallies, drum, carp, and gar.  I'm leaning toward carp.

What do you think they are, and why would they kill the smallmouth bite?

Regards,

Josh

They may be some type of bream or panfish hitting bugs or something on top.  Ive seen this too, where I fish.  I have never noticed it impacting a bit though.  But then again, I rarely target smallmouth.

29 minutes ago, visagelaid said:

They may be some type of bream or panfish hitting bugs or something on top.  Ive seen this too, where I fish.  I have never noticed it impacting a bit though.  But then again, I rarely target smallmouth.

I too thought it strange. First time I chalked it up to coincidence, but it happens every time.

I need to get my fly rod out and see if they bite on a popper. My fly rod comes apart though; it was Grandpa's and he used it hard. Might just buy a new fly rod but am not a huge fan of the art as I am baitcasters.

Josh

I see that frequently (but I have never noticed that it killed the smallmouth bite). I suspect those are small baitfish feeding on some type of insect hatch.

I wonder if your lack of success when this starts up is due to the smallmouths changing their feeding behavior (maybe they were bottom oriented and now they are looking up at those baitfish).

Photobucket videos will not play on my computer . Strange . 

3 minutes ago, Turtle135 said:

I see that frequently (but I have never noticed that it killed the smallmouth bite). I suspect those are small baitfish feeding on some type of insect hatch.

I wonder if your lack of success when this starts up is due to the smallmouths changing their feeding behavior (maybe they were bottom oriented and now they are looking up at those baitfish).

I've wondered this and did recently have some success by switching to a spinnerbait when it starts. Still not a huge success, though.

Photobucket looks like it downgraded the video after the upload, but it looks like about 3/4 of the way through there's a smallie that jumps near the middle of the river (right screen).

Maybe I should throw a jitterbug..? Worth a shot.

Josh

2 minutes ago, scaleface said:

Photobucket videos will not play on my computer . Strange . 

same here.

That's odd. What OS and browsers are you using? The vid is hosted as an .mp4, which is almost universal.

I would put it on my YouTube except the channel is under my business name and I don't want to appear to be self-promoting. It's too big to upload to this website. Ideas?

Josh

6 minutes ago, Josh Smith said:

Maybe I should throw a jitterbug..? Worth a shot.

Josh

when the river starts to come to life because of some insect hatch on the surface I have had some crazy fast action by throwing a small popper that has tail feathers

8 minutes ago, Josh Smith said:

That's odd. What OS and browsers are you using? The vid is hosted as an .mp4, which is almost universal.

I would put it on my YouTube except the channel is under my business name and I don't want to appear to be self-promoting. It's too big to upload to this website. Ideas?

Josh

I use Chrome and Windows 10 . I also have a photobucket account and use it a lot . I tried downloading videos to it but could never get them to play . 

18 minutes ago, scaleface said:

I use Chrome and Windows 10 . I also have a photobucket account and use it a lot . I tried downloading videos to it but could never get them to play . 

That's weird. I use Firefox and Windows 10. Chrome handles Flash slightly differently (I've heard) but it should still play. Do you have any Flash blockers or ad blocking tools installed? Those can interfere.

Josh

1 hour ago, Josh Smith said:

That's weird. I use Firefox and Windows 10. Chrome handles Flash slightly differently (I've heard) but it should still play. Do you have any Flash blockers or ad blocking tools installed? Those can interfere.

Josh

  It was the ad blocking . Now I can see it .

Try a weedless hollow body frog or Johnson weedless spoon on the weed mat.

Tom