After a long north country winter, cabin fevered smallmouth bass anglers itch for the day the ice leaves and we can hit the water to connect with then ole brown fish.
Armed with our favorite ice-out baits like:
- hair jigs
- suspending crankbaits
- thin, flat-sided crankbaits (like shad raps)
- Small spoons or jigging minnows
we head out to find transition areas between their deep water wintering homes and the shallow feeding flats and spawning bays and probe those areas with our traditional ice-out lure arsenal.
There is one bait and presentation we sometimes overlooked shortly after the ice cover departs... using a yo-yo retrieve with a lipless crankbait.
It can be a smallie killer under the right conditions as Doug Stange from InFiseherman demos in the following video...
I often use yo-yo retrieves with lipless cranks for ice-out largies with great success, time to try it on smallies as well!
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