SMALLMOUTH BRAGGER BOARD

[Slip Sinker]

post your personal bests or braggers in this discussion... if possible post a description of the details of your catch.

[Slip Sinker]

First 20" Class Smallmouth...

[John Sheehan]

Excellent Smallies Slip!

[Slip Sinker]

thanks John... 

[Eric Pierce]

Super looking smallie's Slip....

[Slip Sinker]

thanks Eric... im very lucky to be living near some great reservoirs with incredible smallmouth fisheries. these river systems.Huge populations of forage keep these fish growing fast and big.

[Gerome Hilliard]

I hope I'm doing this correctly. For years past my fishing passion was "Smallmouth Bass". I live in North Alabama and we are blessed with several good smallmouth lakes in our area. I did a lot of night fishing and one evening my son in law and I were intending to go to Wheeler Lake for a night fishing trip but when we arrived the weather wasn't looking too good for storms were moving in so we decided to go to Wilson Lake which is just a little further west. Wilson is a smaller lake and offers more places to get out of the wind in the event things get too bad. We fished for about 3 hours and caught 3 smallmouth weighing a total of 17 lb 15 oz.  Pictured here are the 2 I caught which weighed 6/3 and 5/8. I didn't have a pic of my S-I-L's 6/4 and he also has a 7/6 which came out of Wilson.  All 3 fish were caught on 1/8 oz jigs with a pork trailer.

[John Sheehan]

Welcome aboard Gerome and great job catching those beautiful smallies. I heard great things about pork rind for smallies . Can you elaborate on the specific pork rind size and style cut you used . I'll be going to the 1000 islands fishing for smallies in September and a friend suggested pork trailers

.  

[Gerome Hilliard]

John, most of my jig fishing for SM was (is) done at night. We fished jigs and rind as an imitation of a crawfish with a very slow crawl presentation.  In times past I used 1/8 oz hair jigs exclusively and Uncle Josh 101 pork rind. My mentor taught me that the rind would have better action if I would split the tail section all the way up to the thick part of the rind and then scrape off some of the fat on the flippers so they would be more flexible. I have to believe he was right for we caught bunches of smallmouth using this technique. As I progressed in my pursuit of these hard fighting fish I tried many different variations of jig combinations but for me I settled in on using one type of jig and one type of trailer - a 3/16 oz Punisher Hair Jig and a Net Bait Paca Mini Trailer. I do occasionally fish for SM during day time but prefer night time. Most of the time I limit my baits to the Jig, short arm spinner bait, and some type of plastic crawfish imitator.  I love our local lakes Wheeler, Wilson, and Pickwick but do like an occasional trip to Tims Ford or Dale Hollow. Hope I've helped some.

[John Sheehan]

That's an old Largemouth and Smallmouth trick I read back in the 80's in IN-Fisherman mag. Thanks Gerome , a101 huh, ok.  The smallie in my profile pic for this group was caught in the dark at 4 am in August .Got him on a Black Jitterbug.

[Slip Sinker]

top water at night excellent choice also....i used to do very well with 3/8 oz black spinner baits with silver Colorado blade trailer with a Mister twister 4" black grub. my number one all time night bait for bass.

[John Sheehan]

Only tried that a few times ,no success .I read they work well though .That Jitterbug smallie I caught was the 1st cast .The 2nd cast netted a smaller but good sized Largemouth .

[Slip Sinker]

2015.09.27 ~ what made this fish a bragger ... WAS THE BATTLE!!... Micro UL spinning rig with 2# ice braid! at least five spectacular leaps  and some great runs