"There should be some fish in this hole," Alex Rutledge said as he positioned the boat to do a controlled drift downstream. The water was deep and swift where we cast our soft plastic baits against the solid rock bluff which seemed to rise straight out of the turbulant green water. As usual, Alex was right. Immediately, he and I both set the hook on a chunky Ozark bronzeback. The boated smallmouths were dark brown with black tiger stripes and red eyes.
Pound for pound the smallmouth is one of the strongest fighting fish in America and these were no exception. With spinning tackle and light line in the fast water, these hard fighting fish felt bigger than they actually were. We admired the pair before releasing them to fight again someday. His fish was bigger than mine which is normal when he and I fish together. Throughout the rest of the evening we repeated this senario over several times, catching thirty something fish, most of which were smallmouth bass. Some of them were very good fish for this region, but all of the bass were released. Other anglers were having similiar results. The fishing technique which seemed to be working for them as well as us was using a heavy leadhead jig and a brown to brown/yellow jigging tube. Often, a dark green will work good in the rivers across the region but today the bass would not hit the darker colored baits or the green color phases either.
Almost every stretch of water which we fished that was suitable for spawning showed signs of past spawning activity, but all of the spawning beds were too small to have been used by the smallmouth bass. A number of the bass we caught during the course of the day were egg laden females, though it was much too late for the typical smallmouth spawn. Alex, who has as much outdoor savvy as anyone I know simply said, "The smallmouths have not spawned. Every female bass we have caught for the last 3 months have had eggs in them." We discussed the apparent lack of a smallmouth bass spawn this particular spring, but had no answer of why.
Not being satisfied by the lack of knowledge of what was going on I called Sam Barkley, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission fisheries biologists to try to find an answer. Besides being a biologist, Sam is a very knowledgeable fisherman. When asked about the apparent lack of spawning activity by the smallmouth bass, Barkley, of course was well aware of what was going on. He states "We have just completed a fish count and stomach contents survey in the rivers in our region. Each female smallmouth bass we found still had eggs in them. There is a remote possibility that the bass spawned very early and have geared up for a second spawn, but I don't feel this is the case. The eggs which the female bass are carrying are too large to be for a second spawn. I don't think the river smallmouths are going to spawn this year. The walleye and other river fish have spawned, but I think the high water levels along with the fact that the water levels kept changing caused the smallmouths to never feel comfortable in spawning. The female fish will reasorb their eggs over a period of time".
We are only talking about river smallmouth bass here, not the other species of fish and not the lake fish. When I asked Barkley about the largemouth bass spawn, especially in the lakes, he says "The high water conditions and the fact that there is lots of brush and vegetation in the water allowed the largemouth bass to have a tremendously successful spawn. In the last couple of years the water levels in the lakes have been low and this allowed the brush and vegetation to grow. When the water levels got high and stayed high, the fish spawned. The baby fish have lots of cover to hide in and this helps them to survive. This along with the fact that the high water creates much more surface water area for the fish to live in helped this be a very good spawn. Several of the lakes needed this successful spawn."
According to Barkley, we will see the results of the good largemouth and other game fish spawn in the next several years because the surviving fry from this spring's spawn will greatly add to the fish being caught by the fishermen. How the lack of a river smallmouth bass spawn will affect the fishing across this region is yet to be seen but the current regulations in place should insure that there will a adequate population of smallmouth for those fishermen who are hopelessly hooked on battling bronzebacks.
reprinted with permission: Paxton Media Group
