I'm in a tournament at Smith Mountain Lake on July 18th. We launch from Hardy,VA which from I hear is up the river, away from the main lake.

Does anyone have any tips? What to throw, where to throw? Ive never fished there, so I'm going to go through the motions, buzzbait, worm.....

Any tips would be appreciated!!!Thanks!!!

you fishing the sml bass series, I might make that one myself. If the weather stays hot as hell I gonna say fish deep, as for location no clue .

Get the GMCO map of SML.

Study it, looking for coves, creeks and where the bank goes deep by secondary points or along the shoreline along with humps and ramps, etc.

Way too many places to fish SML so track out an area of about 5 miles up and down the lake and fish that area.

Otherwise you will do nothing but run up and down the lake wasting time and viewing all of the other boats and jet skis.

Google "fishing smith mountain lake" and see what blogs come up. You can read what is being said and contact some of those guys and get their input.

Good luck. 

Curiousangler, yes we're getting in that tourney. Looks pretty cool and laid back. Let me know if you're gonna make it!!

Sam, thanks for the info, I'll be sure to check the maps out.

Good luck with all the jetskis and pleasure boaters. Which river arm will you be in? Theres the Roanoke and the Blackwater rivers and they merge not too far from the dam. Im headed down to SML this weekend myself. Im not very familiar with the river arms at all, as im usually in the Craddock Creek area. Before my uncle moved lake houses to a different area of the lake, he owned a house in a cove that always had big bass cruising around his dock. if you make it out in the main lake youll see a point with a black and white lighthouse, if you go to the left youll see a cove with a ton of sailboats, thats a nice cove to fish in back there, plus its no wake and you dont have to deal with pleasure boaters and jet skis, dont be afraid to go all the way back in the corner of it either...

Edit: this is a good fishing report that i read for the lake. he will tell you whats working, he runs a tackle shop and talks to a lot of people from around the lake. it gets updated once a week and is also published in the smith mountain eagle paper i believe.

http://www.virginiaoutdoorsman.com/content/report.html

I want to say its the Roanoke arm? Its pretty far up the river towards Roanoke. If we get a chance to head to the main lake, I'll be sure to check out that spot. Thanks for that website, its real helpful. I saw on there that the shop and website are up for sale??? Hope he doesn't sell it too soon...LOL.

Thanks everyone for their advice. Curiousangler, hope to see you there. Like I said, let me know if you enter so we can meet up.

Have a fun and safe holiday weekend everyone!!

Hardy ramp is way up the Roanoke River. If you go down the lake you'll come up on some good creeks (Lynville, Beaverdam, Grimes, etc...)

You can catch fish shallow early but once the sun gets up you should try to find some deep stuff to fish....deep docks if you cant find anything else....no shortage of docks around here.

The more dependable bite right now is on the main channel and deep. I cant say too much, I'll be fishing that tournament too. 

Docks are the main structure on SML. The more you fish the more you'll catch fish them shallow in the spring and deep in the summer. I seem to catch more on wood docks than metal.

As far as what to throw your guess is as good as mine SML is so unpredictable sometimes. Some days I toss a coin to decide what to throw. Yesterday we boated 12 bass over 14 inches lost about 6 more.

Want a pattern ? how about this for a pattern we caught a few on worms, oh yeah then 2 on a hair jig 1 on a crankbait 2 on a rubber jig and then a couple on texas rigged craw! :-/

So I couldn't tell you because I don't know what I'd fish if I was in a toury this weekend. They also came on diffrent types of structure nothing I could duplicate!!!!!!! So Good luck

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bassmasters+smith+mountain+lake&aq=f