Hello every one. I am new to the forums and have been reading many of the post on here and find them enjouyable and very usefull. Bt I do have a question. What baits do you like to use for smallies while fishing in Rivers?  I am mainly fishing in the new river. I have always had good luck with inline spinners but rarly catch anything bigger than 2 pounds. What other type of baits would you recomend fishing in these waters which have a strong current in most places with some deep pools.  Thanks for the tips.

BN

If you have crawdad's in the river you can't go wrong with crawdad imatation plastics.  Go to your local bass shop and you will find tons of them. Most are used for trailers, but you can use them all by them selves with a bullet weight texas, carolina, or use a jig head.  My favorite bait in rivers are tubes in green pumpkin or smoke colors.  They look natural like crawdads and move like them.  I would use foot ball head jigs and put the tube on them.  You will lose baits, but you will catch a lot too.  Spider jigs are also great lures in natural colors.

tubes, flukes and finess worms   to start with   just wondering  are u talking about one of the potomac rivers?

soft plastics like craws tubes and flukes work well as well as crankbaits and topwaters, in fact pretty much any thing will work if used during the appropriate time of year and presented properly

Thanks for the replies and advice I appreciate them. How do you guys rig the flukes?  

The New River start in North Carolina and goes through Virginia and into West Virginia. It meets the Gauley River to form the begining of the Kanawha <sp> river. That flows down to the Ohio River.

BN

Any new product out there I can try for Large Mouth Bass or King Salmon?

Fishing out at Pine Flat Lake, California

beechnut, the one time I fished the New River, I saw plenty of GIANT crawdads. I had good luck with plastic crawdad imitations. Tubes are also worth a shot as they are supposed to look like crawdads to fish.

I also like to fish plastic jerkbaits like flukes or shakey head worms on football head jigs. The New is pretty rocky, so I would recommend the football jigs, they will get stuck in rocks much less than a standard jighead. As I've said, I only fished there once, but I found pools and cast up ahead of them and let crawdad baits drift down into the pools with the current. I caught about 10 in an hour and lost one really big one that cut my line on the rocks or just broke me off.

Tubes and grubs.

Even caught them on a Roostertail when fishing for bream for catfish bait.

i would try out:

small profile baby jigs with small profile crawfish as a trailer and drag it in slowly....or hop it, and pause it

go Black with blue flake or black and red flake

Also, finnese worm on a small drop shot style rig....like a kuttaIL worm by yamamoto

Creature bait weightless with a heavy 4/0 hook

tubes, fished many ways are always productive

but i say, Jigs are my everyday choice on the river!

I would try something similar to an inline spinner since you are already comfortable with it.  STICK with your confidence baits for starters.

I would definately suggest throwing an 1/8 oz Gamakatsu jig head with your favorite color 3"- 4" grub.  You can fish this like your inline spinner but a grub can be worked slower and it won't snag.  If you want more depth, put a 4 inch senko on the jig head and let it slowly glide and spiral towards the bottom. ( The lack of tail will get your bait down further.)

I recomend this bait for you for starters. The 4" senko produces bigger fish than the grub..but start with swimming the grub same way you do the small blade baits......your sizes will increase as you graduate to the senko.  Try this and send me a christmass card when you get a 3 pounder !