PICKWICK STATE PARK — Smallmouth bass occupy much the same habitat as largemouth and spotted bass, but relate much more strongly to temperature and current. Finding them, then provoking them to strike, calls upon techniques within techniques and offers special rewards all their own.
Pickwick State Park, a tremendous draw for bass anglers of every stripe that plays host to tournaments nearly every weekend of the year, is also the jumping-off point for many targeting smallmouth specifically.
Compared to largemouths, smallmouth bass prefer cooler water with a steady current. Generally they’re more attracted to smaller baits with brighter colors, and they more readily exploit a wider array of food. That said, their preferred diets and habitats and those of the green bass often overlap. With the shad spawn underway at Pickwick, both species may be found in the pockets early in the morning and in deeper waters later in the day, but, for smallmouths, the more current-related the area the better.
The relationship of smallmouth to current can hardly be overstated. In so far as bass of any color can reliably be found, smallmouth will be in current-oriented spots with chunk rock, riprap or pea gravel, as well as on shell beds and over bottoms with hard surfaces, depending on the current’s depth and speed.
Impoundments along the Tennessee River, and below Pickwick Dam specifically, serve both watershed management and electrical-generation purposes. A lot of rain in the Ohio River Valley will cause water managers along the Tennessee to release water, as will the need for generating electricity.
What smallmouth will eat depends largely on what’s typically found in the areas they’re using. Smallmouths working deep rock piles are often targeting crawfish. Small jigs, hair jigs, Ned rigs and those with vibrating tails often work well for anglers in smallmouth scenarios.
In bigger water with truly big current, such as that found below dam spillways, smallmouth enthusiast Jake Tippee, of Athens, Ala., favors the products created by Mike Bucca, the Bull Shad Swimbaits.
Originally from St. Louis, Tippee came to the University of North Alabama years ago to play baseball. While there, he and friends often fished for big striped bass in the tailwaters below Wilson Dam, and often hauled in trophy-sized smallmouth as bycatch. It happened so often, they started entering bass tournaments, where largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass are accepted but striped bass are not, and fished for smallmouth using their standard striped bass techniques.
“We never weighed in a limit, but we won lunker pretty often, and people were amazed at how we were doing it,” Tippee said. “To truly target smallmouth, you need to get out there in the current. I fish around tailrace waters.”
Tippee says prime areas for smallmouth include high-current areas below both Pickwick and Wilson Dams, and below Kogers Island, near the Natchez Trace Bridge over the Tennessee River.
“All of the Tennessee River is good,” he said.
Construction of Pickwick Landing Dam began in 1934 and was completed in 1938. The dam stands 113 feet high and stretches nearly a mile and a half across the Tennessee River, with six hydroelectric generating units. The dam takes its name from a local post office, a name originally inspired by the first novel by Charles Dickens, “The Pickwick Papers,” and was created during Roosevelt’s New Deal Era, which spawned the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Six hydroelectric generating units flush water over rocky shoals below the dam, creating the current and cool water that is superb smallmouth bass habitat. The fish grow fat on threadfin shad and crawfish.
Pickwick covers 43,100 acres and snakes for 53 miles from Pickwick Dam up to Wilson Dam. It’s cut with rocky bluffs, deep ledges, grass expanses, creek channels, and quiet coves, each corner supporting different bass populations.
Anglers need to be in the best locations when TVA opens the turbines to begin generating electricity. Smallmouth generally relate to the hills and drop-offs closest to the main river channel, especially when current is being pulled through the lake as the hydroelectric plant generates electricity.
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