TACKLE
AND
TECH
If you want to catch big, angry smallies,
try Matt Stefan's approach and slowly
wake a topwater over their heads.
A slow-moving surface bait is too much for
smallmouths to resist By Curtis Niedermier
T
he aggressive nature of smallmouth
bass is one of their
most endearing qualities in the
eyes of many anglers. The smartest
anglers figure out how to take advantage
of that character trait.
Tackle Warehouse Pro Circuit pro
Matt Stefan hammers big smallmouths
all season near his Wisconsin home.
Among his favorite tools to do so is a
wake bait, which doesn’t get a ton of
attention as a smallmouth catcher. To
Stefan, a wake bait is hugely productive
because of its slow, lumbering action
across the surface, which aggressive
smallmouths just can’t ignore.
“It’s a killer bait all year long for
them,” Stefan adds, “and you will get
some of the most explosive bites on it. I
find that the hookup percentage is
really good when you compare to
throwing a Spook. With a Spook, I feel
like they’ll hit it three or four times, and
with the wake bait, they get it the first
time. I feel like that’s because it’s such
a slow, tantalizing deal.”
PHOTO BY JODY WHITE
Searching the Spawn
Spawning season (usually around
Memorial Day in Stefan’s region) is the
start of the smallmouth wake bait pattern.
Stefan targets the fish on rocky
flats in 8 to 12 feet of water. Even in
clear water, the beds are often deep
enough that they’re challenging to see.
By throwing the wake bait, he can get
the bass to reveal themselves.
“That’s a good spawning range, but
it’s also at the point where, unless you
have absolutely perfect conditions, you
don’t see them,” Stefan adds. “That’s
what’s so great with this [wake bait]. It
draws them up, and then you know
where they’re at. You’ll catch a bunch,
but at the same time, it’s really about
locating fish. Usually you’ll get multiple
fish in a small area, and that’ll tell you
that’s a good spawning flat so you can
come back and pick it apart [with other
baits].”
Topwater, in general, works well for
this approach, and Stefan bases his
choice between a wake bait and other
options on the scenario. You throw the
wake bait when you can answer yes to
the question: Can a smallmouth see
this thing coming from far away?
“When they’re on a big rocky flat in
clear water, they’ll see that bait coming
from 30 feet away, and they can’t take
it by the time it’s 10 feet over their
heads,” Stefan says. “They’ll come up
and roll on it.”
At the April 2019 FLW Tour event on
Tennessee’s Cherokee Lake, smallies
were spawning in droves. Stefan was
able to catch some fish with the wake
bait, but he determined it wasn’t the
best choice in that situation. The fish
were locked down on precise rock
“wedges” rather than spread across a
flat, and he thinks they weren’t keying
on the wake bait from a distance.
“I did better throwing a topwater
bait like a popper that I could keep
over their head,” he adds.
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FLWFISHING.COM | MAJORLEAGUEFISHING.COM | JUNE-JULY 2020