Spring/Summer Fly Fishing for Smallmouth on Lake Pend Oreille
As I write this piece, it’s raining/snowing, 34-degrees Fahrenheit, and the forecast calls for heavy snow the rest of the week.
It doesn’t take much for me to start daydreaming of warmer days on Lake Pend Oreille, and this dreary forecast is no exception. I can picture myself stripping poppers along a suspect dock, awaiting an explosion in 75-degree weather. Honestly, spring can’t come soon enough.
For some, spring means matching blue-wing olive hatches and casting streamers during spring runoff, or engaging the bobber and lead in the San Juan-athon, which is my term for working San Juan Worms when everything else fails.
For me, however, spring means the start of the smallmouth season and one of the best opportunities to take giant bass in shallow water. This is an opportunity you should take advantage of, too. And in this article I’ll give you the basics for success—I won’t give away all of my secrets, but you should learn what’s necessary to take your next five-pound Pend Oreille smallmouth.
Let’s talk gear. Smallmouth pull, so you can’t challenge an Idaho smallie with your average 9 foot 5-weight. I highly recommend a 9 foot fast-action 6, 7, or 8-weight rod to do the trick. In my opinion, a 6-weight is the perfect rod choice for the average Lake Pend Oreille smallmouth. However, when you tie into a 5 pound hog you may think, Wish I had that 8-weight. That’s because you might need a little extra power to turn that fish’s head and guide it to the boat. An 8-weight also makes casting large poppers easier on the arm, which translates to longer days on the lake. The Loop Q and Sage Pulse rods are both great fast-action models to consider for your next smallie slayer and we have those rods available in the shop.
You’ll need specialty lines to chase these smallmouth, too. And that line choice depends on how you plan to fish for these bass. Basically, you have three line choices to choose from, starting with floating. Floating line is the perfect choice when fishing to shallow spawning bass, and stripping poppers. If you are looking to target fish in 4 feet water or even shallower, a floating line is your best friend. My personal favorite floating line is Airflo’s Bass/Muskie fly line. Built to cast heavy flies, this line delivers with only a single false-cast.
Another line you might want is Rio’s Camolux. This is an intermediate line, meaning it sinks at 1.5-to 2 inches per second. This is a great for fishing weightless streamers. And it’s absolutely perfect for bass staging in 4-to 8 feet of water, fish that prefer a slower retrieve. I usually throw an intermediate line when bass are piled up under shady docks, daring a small perch to swim by.
My third line of choice is 30 feet of T-8 followed by 115 feet of Rio Slick Shooter. This line combination isn’t like any conventional weight-forward fly line. The 30 feet of T-8 works as a shooting head to drive your fly against the banks, and sink at 6-to 7 inches per second. The Rio Slick Shooter is your average nylon shooting line, excellent for extended shootability. I always have a rod rigged with this line setup no matter when or where I am smallmouthing. This is my line of choice when stripping Clousers in eight-to 20 feet of water.
When fishing smallmouth you’ll want a broad fly selection, with many of these being basic patterns. Anything that resembles a kokanee salmon, a perch, a pumpkinseed, or a juvenile bass catches fish. My favorite streamers include a 2/0 chartreuse Hud’s Bushwacker, a #2 olive Clouser, and a 1/0 Low Fat Minnow Bluegill. If one fly isn’t working, I simply tie on a different color or change patterns entirely. The Bushwacker and Clouser both work well in all depths and scenarios, while the Bluegill is ideal for spawning bass. There is no way a bass would allow a bluegill to swim over its bed without striking it. If the topwater bite is hot, throw a chartreuse, orange or white popper against a bank to trigger a strike. There isn’t a day when a smallmouth won’t eat one of these aforementioned patterns.
Finding spring smallmouth bass on Idaho’s Lake Pend Orville
It’s essential to understand that smallmouth are temperature driven fish. Their habits generally don’t change much until the water temperature does. Once the Lake Pend Oreille reaches roughly 45-to 50-degrees Fahrenheit, the smallies enter their pre-spawn. For Lake Pend Oreille, this typically takes place at the end of March or in April, depending on the winter weather. If Bonner County has a rough winter, pre-spawn might be pushed back a couple weeks.
Pre-spawn is a time when bass crush slowly presented 2-to 6 inch-long perch or kokanee imitations in five-to 10 feet of water. This is when you should throw floating and intermediate fly lines.
A few notable places to fish during pre-spawn are Sunnyside, Denton Slough, Ellisport Bay, Windbag Marina, and the train trestle bridge out of Sandpoint. Remember that the north shore of the lake sees more sun, so it will warm up faster than the south end. Also, if we get a windy spring day, the mudlines along shore will be a couple degrees warmer than the rest of the lake. A little mud might be enough to drive bass into the shallows.
Once water temperatures reach 55-to 60 degrees, smallmouth enter into the spawn. The spawn usually happens mid-May, and is a magical time to fly-fish for giant bronzebacks using the same floating and intermediate fly-lines used during the pre-spawn. You’ll want to slowly retrieve weightless flies along structure in 2-to 10 feet of water. If a bass swipes at your fly, don’t pull it away. If you miss on the first grab, don’t quit—he or she may come back for a second look. So, when you miss, simply give the fly a couple seconds to fall, then a few small twitches. Sometimes, that is all it takes to lure a second strike.
If you are only finding 1-to 2-pound male bass, give your fishing spot a couple days. It won’t be long before the big ones slip in. The spawn is usually when most of the bigger smallies are caught along docks, trees, or in a stump field. Unfortunately, a lot of giant smallmouth are kept at this time, and not given the chance to pass on their genes. In my opinion, the spawn is an opportune time to practice catch-and-release. Idaho Department of Fish and Game finds that, due to our short growing season, it takes a smallmouth 7.8 years to reach 16 inches. So imagine how long it took for a 4-pound bass to reach its size and practice catch-and-release accordingly.
Once the spawn is complete, I have no problem keeping a couple smallies for the dinner plate. A few great places to fish for spawning smallies include Denton Slough, Perch Bay, Oden Bay, Sand Creek, and near Memorial Field. The bass in Sand Creek enter into the spawning stage a couple weeks later than the rest of the lake because Sand Creek is one of Lake Pend Oreille’s coldest tributaries.
Post-spawn can be one of the most frustrating times to fly-fish for hog smallmouth. Post spawn takes place…well…after the spawn. It feels like the big females swim into Harry Houdini’s underground tunnels, leaving only the 1-pound males along the shorelines. Don’t get me wrong, catching 15-to 20 smallmouth in a few hours can be fun, but it is the 3-plus-pounders that really make the day.
Post-spawn is a great time to prospect and try different techniques. If you enjoy covering ground, quickly stripping streamers along rocky shorelines, that is what you need to do. If you are a finesse kind of angler, then take your time, and fish the flies slowly. There is no wrong way to fish for smallies during post spawn. For me, post-spawn officially marks the time when I will start throwing topwater poppers. It’s not that bass won’t eat surface flies during the spawn, I just seem to have the most success after the spawn. A few places I like to hit during the post-spawn are Sunnyside, Fisherman’s Island, Ellisport Bay, and along the Hope shoreline.
Finding summer smallmouth bass on Lake Pend Oreille
Ski boats buzzing up and down the lake, water temperatures in the upper 60’s to mid-70’s—now is the time to fish early and late and late in the day to avoid those extremes. This is when I love to conduct pre-work fishing trips. I get to fish, arguably, the best time of day for smallmouth, and still make a little money.
If I am to dedicate time to fish for summer smallmouth, I want to be on the water, ready to fish, 30 minutes before sunrise. This is when a majority of large smallmouth do most of their feeding. Break out the T-8, hit the 6-to 15 foot deep flats, and strip your favorite streamers.
Once the sun ascends, the bass descend. With water temperatures rising by the hour, and boat traffic increasing by the minute, smallmouth turn into ghosts and go deep. Surface flies can be extremely effective on calm, quite mornings before the boat madness starts. Finding overhanging shade is always a good place to fish. Hanging trees, big docks, islands, and boulders are all key structures to look for when trying to locate shade.
Like I mentioned earlier, the south end of the lake sees less sun than the north end. A few great places to fish in the summer are Ellisport Bay, Warren Island, Rocky Point, The Long Bridge, the Sandpoint train trestle, Sourdough Point, and Sunnyside.
Boat or Wade
Pend Oreille is a giant lake and best fished with a boat, but that doesn’t mean you can’t catch smallmouth from shore. The best time to do just that is during the pre-spawn and spawn because the fish are shallow at that time. In fact, on windless days you may be able to spot those fish from shore and make a play on them. One of the best places to fish from shore is off the Pend Oreille Bay Trail, which follows the lake and offers access to a couple miles of good water with abundant structure and broad flats. As the water warms in summer the bass go deep and your wade-fishing options decrease.
If you have a boat, use it, even if it’s just a kayak. The first year I fished Pend Oreille I did so from a kayak and caught lots of fish. In fact, there wasn’t much water that I wanted to fish that I couldn’t reach from this modest watercraft.
Small skiffs are good smallmouth tools for Pend Oreille, but the bigger the boat the more ground you can cover. No matter how large your boat may be you have to respect Pend Oreille. The wind can kick up quickly so you always need to check the weather before heading out. When fishing from a small boat I don’t go out if the winds are forecast at 10 miles an hour or more. Larger boats can handle that wind, but there’s a cutoff point for everyone.
With a boat you can fish smallmouth all summer long, in any depth of water, wherever you choose, which means you can get away from heavy-use areas and find your own little dreamworld somewhere on the lake.
Lake Pend Oreille’s world-class smallmouth bass
Here at Lake Pend Oreille we have an incredible smallmouth fishery that is greatly overlooked by most fly-fishers. Many local bass experts believe the next state-record smallmouth will be caught in Lake Pend Oreille. With spring approaching, now is the time to gear up and take your shot at the big ones. See you on the lake.