KAYAK FISHING FOR SMALLMOUTH BASS
Spring is almost here. Now is a great time to get on the water and find smallmouth bass. It won’t be long before the water will start to warm up and the bass will start making beds. Over the last several years, my son and I have been fishing pre-spawn smallmouth from kayaks and have noticed that catching large smallmouth is a lot of fun when using a kayak. Not only is it fun, fishing from a kayak offers many advantages over fishing from a boat. Below are a few reasons why you may want to purchase a kayak this spring and start fishing for smallmouth.
KAYAKS DON’T SPOOK FISH LIKE A BIG BOAT
For starters, smallmouth can be extremely spooky, especially when you are fishing in shallow water where they can look up and see the shadow of a boat. A dark colored kayak is a little harder to see in the water. Our kayak is army green and seems to blend in well on the clear northern lakes we fish. With a kayak, we can sneak up into the shallows and the bass don’t seem to notice that the kayak is there which allows us to cast a line without disturbing the fish.
SIGHT FISHING
Sight fishing is much easier in a kayak than any other type of boat. A kayak sits very low in the water, allowing an angler to easily see bass on a bed in the shallows. We typically can slip into the shallows, watch bass sitting on their beds, and cast a Dewey soft plastic or a live crayfish right over the top of a bed and watch as the bass strikes. When sight fishing from a kayak, we can cruise around the shallows and pick and choose which fish we want to target. When we see small bass on beds, we can quickly and easily pass them by and target only large fish.
FISH WHERE OTHERS CAN’T
Another reason we like to fish from kayaks is we can fish in areas larger boats can’t fish. This allows us to fish areas in lakes and rivers that larger boats cant reach. Last summer we fished in a bay on Drummond Island at the east end of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The bays around this island are heavily fished. It is no secret that there are a lot of large smallmouth bass around this island. The rocky bottoms in and around the island is where a lot of smallmouth bass spawn. Many of these bays get really shallow; even small boats can’t always reach the shallows where the fish spawn in the bays. We launched our two-man kayak from a nearby shore and were able to catch lots of fish that hadn’t been pressured by other anglers. Like in other lakes in Northern Michigan, the water was clear and sight fishing in the shallows was a lot of fun.
KAYAKS ARE EASY TO TRANSPORT
Navigating small rivers in the spring is much easier from a kayak than from a large boat. What I like most about kayak fishing is a kayak can easily be strapped down on the roof of a vehicle and transported. From small lakes and rivers to big bodies of water and everything in between, a kayak is a great way to fish for smallmouth or largemouth bass in the spring and summer. A kayak is quiet, easy to maneuver, and there are all kinds of accessories available to turn any kayak into hardcore fishing boat.
If you are a hardcore angler but don’t want to invest in an expensive boat or you have a big boat but want a smaller option, try kayak fishing!
