Yesterday my neighbor and I went to my favorite lake.  We were looking for suspended spotted bass on swim baits.  After an hour with only one I decided to see if the smallmouth were still in the area.  We pulled out the jigs, shaky heads and Ned rigs. 
 

We found smallmouth on shallow rocky wind blown banks.  They wouldn’t touch the jig no matter what size or color we used.  When I say shallow I mean really shallow.  The deepest that the boat was setting in was 8’ but most of the time it was 5 or 6.  In some places they were on points.  In others they would be way back in the coves.  The key was windy, rocky and shallow.  Banks without lots of rocks had nothing.

 

Mixed in with the smallmouth were spots and largemouth.  It was so rocky that we had to go light.  3/32 oz was the heaviest head that had a life expectancy of more than a cast or two.  A lot of the fish were in a foot or less as they hit as soon as the bait hit the water and we were trying to get as close to the bank as possible.

 

We wound up catching 38 bass with 7 keepers.  The sky was clear to partly cloudy.  The wind was northwest at 10-12.  The air was 37-55° and the water was 63°.  I can’t wait to get back before the pattern changes.

 

The best baits were green pumpkin TRDs Ned rigged and coppertruse Zinkerzs rigged shaky.  We were using the Midwest finesse weedless heads and still lost several baits.

 

excellent report, glad you were able to find them.

Great report! Interesting how shallow they were. I have not caught a fish in less than 18' of water in over a month. I always try to find shallow fish but out here the smallmouth all seem to want to be deep. 

I hope it is a trend not one off.  They did the same thing last fall.  Before that I had never caught them so shallow and I have been fishing this lake for a very long time.

Awesome, thanks for sharing. Like the look of those jigheads too.