Depending on where you are and which fish you target, April is either primetime or pregame for warmwater fly anglers. Pre-spawn is probably your best shot at convincing a giant smallmouth to hunt down and annihilate a big streamer.
Across the upper Midwest, spring arrives in erratic spurts. A week of 70-degree days runs into a hard freeze. Rivers swell, drop, and swell again. Water temperatures can shift several degrees between morning and afternoon, vacillating between the perfect bite window and too cold for anything to move. Understanding that volatility and properly preparing can be the difference between banger and bust. We asked our friends at two of the Midwest’s best fly shops how to make the most of it.
Pre-Spawn Smallmouth in Lakes
Before musky season opens and the full circus gets rolling, there’s a quieter, often overlooked opportunity that Dan Donovan of Musky Fool Fly Fishing in Wisconsin looks forward to all year.
“Even though everyone knows me as a full musky angler, the first thing I get excited about is pre-spawn bass,” he says. “This is probably the one month where I’ll focus on bass. After that, I don’t think about them again until next April.”
When most fly anglers think smallmouth, they think rivers (which we’ll get to shortly). Dan targets pre-spawn bass on lakes because they’re predictable. “The equation in spring on lakes is not that complicated,” he says. “Where does [the water] warm up the fastest closest to where they’re going to spawn? Lo and behold, that’s where all of them are. You get above 50 degree water temps, and all of a sudden it’s like the whole place comes back to life.”
Dan heads for shallow water, rocky points on south-facing banks that absorb direct sunlight. “The water’s really clear, you’re seeing a ton of bait, and you’re targeting them pretty shallow with intermediate and floating lines.”
One of the keys to success, he says, is slowing down. “We’re not burning anything yet. I know where they’re at. It’s more about willing them into eating.” Feather game-changers, leggy boys, Murdich minnows, and jig-style crayfish patterns in brown and black are his go-to selections, fished slow and deep. “I’m not fishing 200 yards of weed line right now. That doesn’t exist. I might do a loop around the point of the peninsula where the rock pile is, do a loop back, and then I’m moving on to another A spot.”
Reading River Smallmouth
Corey Haselhuhn manages Schultz Outfitters in Michigan, a shop that’s become synonymous river fly fishing in the Midwest. Corey and the guides he works with have identified several temperature windows that dictate how they approach spring smallmouth.
When the water’s cold, high 30s to low 40s, the smallmouth fishing can still be surprisingly good—if you know where to look. Corey suggests looking for stretches of river with very specific features: shallow, slack water with heavy timber over a dark, soft substrate. “15 years ago, I would have said there’s no way a bass is sitting in a foot and a half of water when the water’s 34 degrees. But those softer, dark, mucky bottoms warm first, hold heat, and insulate. That’s where you find the first signs of life. Fish will line up in those areas. There could be up to 15 or 20 smallmouth in a small, confined area.”
When you locate those prime areas, slow down and work them. “Speed of presentation is the most critical thing in cold water. It’s literally the deciding factor,” Corey says. Fish heavily weighted flies, three to five inches, on intermediate lines. Keep your flies close to the bottom, and use patterns that wiggle with minimal movement. “Bass and rubber legs go together really well.”
Once the water temperature hits the mid to high 40s, that’s when the real pre-spawn fishing starts up. “There’s this beautiful lead up to that 50 degree mark. It’s really good, heavy-hitting, big fly, aggressive, everything you could ask for out of smallmouth fishing. You’re playing higher in the water column. The fish are willing to come out and pursue something with a vengeance. You can get into some excessively sized flies, where bass eat seven, eight, nine-inch long flies with authority.”
In addition to water temperature, keep an eye on flows. “As that transition is happening, our water levels start to fluctuate. If you have low water, it’s going to warm very, very rapidly. So that cherry window can expire very quickly. Once those temps are steady climbing, there's a sense of urgency to try to get as much in and cover water and cover ground.”
The Spawn: Know When to Back Off
Both Corey and Dan are emphatic on this point: Pre-spawn smallmouth fishing is fantastic, but they leave actively spawning fish alone.
“We don’t target fish on beds,” Corey says. “There’s a whole side of the bass fishing world that actively targets fish that are spawning. I’m not here to shame that. I don’t do it. We don’t do it here in terms of our guide staff. We want fish that are not spawning or guarding a nest. We avoid the fish that are creating more of the fish you hope to catch in the future.”
“Anyone with any seriousness to their fishing should be carrying a thermometer,” says Corey. Once the water temperature hits 50 degrees, bass will start actively spawning, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop fishing completely. “Even if you have a lot of fish spawning, you are still going to have fish that aren’t.”
The most important tools for avoiding spawning fish are your eyes. Bass nests are easy to spot in both rivers and lakes. Fish arrange rocks into circular formations in shallow water that stand out clearly. Nests are usually guarded. If you’re seeing rock circles with fish hanging over them, move to a different stretch. “Take the visors off, open the peripheral a little bit, slow down, and look around. If you notice bedding fish, move up or downstream.”
The back end of the spawn typically arrives around 60 degrees. “Once you get into the low to mid-60s, most fish have either finished the process or they’re late to the party,” Corey says. By then, summer fishing is effectively underway.
What to Wear
Spring fishing in the upper Midwest presents a layering problem, not a temperature problem. “The coldest that you get out there on the water is 40 to 50-degree air temps with wind and rain,” Dan says. “When it’s 32 degrees and snowing, you’re not wet. But at 45 degrees and raining, I’m bringing it all. That’s when the Skwala kit has been amazing.”
Both Dan and Corey lean heavily on Skwala’s Thermo collection as their foundation. Thermo 150 and 260 pieces as a base layer, stepping up to the Thermo 350 when temperatures drop. The RS Jacket goes over the top when it gets serious. RS Bib is Dan’s go-to for early and late season boat fishing. “I could go to sleep in it and wake up in it and get out in the boat.”
Corey starts wet wading early. “I’m kind of a weird dude in that I’ll start wet wading when the water gets to about 50 degrees.” He finds that dressing well from the waist up extends his time in cold water considerably. “Thermo 150 and 350 [tops] are my live-in territory.” Depending on the weather he’ll add either a Fusion 3/2 Puffy Jacket or a Fusion 90 Vest over the top.
Finally, don’t forget about your hands. “I’m really pumped to throw Skwala gloves into the mix this year,” says Dan. “We were able to test them out last fall, and I’m excited to add them to the system this spring.