biggest indiana smallie yet

Well I know my state has some bigger fish as I know of other avid smallie anglers I've fished with that have gotten some that went 20" and 21". But this fish was a surprise this past saturday for me. My biggest Indianan smallie to date has been one that was right at 18". I went on a float trip with the wife this weekend and a few friends from work. I didn't have any intentions of really fishing as we did a float through a near by campsite canoe rental place that shuttles you up and then you float down to there location. Did this cause it was intended to be more of a social trip that beers were flowing on. Me being me I couldn't be on the water without a rod. I wasn't fishing hard and wasn't expecting anything much on this stretch of river since it gets a lot of canoe/kayak traffic thanks to the canoe rental place. But to may surprise while drinking beer and casually tossing some lures I hooked into this guy when I first got him I thought he maybe was going to go 20" but not quiet he was right at 19". Still put a good bend in my pole, and managed to zing out some drag, wrapped around a submerged log limb thought I was going to lose him when he did that. I think I was fishing a rod with 6lb test so I didn't have much line strength to horse him, that and I had put down a few adult sodas. Anyways was caught a bps teaser tube in green pumpkin t rigged on a little ewg hook with a 1/8 oz weight he was hiding right behind a big root wad of a downed tree on a steep bank.

I have had a number of smallies this summer that have been decent 15-17", but this is the first this summer that broke 18" and my biggest Indiana one yet. Biggest smallie for me to date was a 21.5" I caught in the Detroit river back in 2012 when I spent a summer in Detroit as a intern with Ford. I'm still trying for a Indiana 20" smallie, in my time growing up in MO my biggest was around this size.

Beautiful fish!

This time of year I find bigger fish bite more readily at night - might be the reason for your smaller summer sizes.

Late fall is when I do best in CT for big smallies during the day, once the water starts to cross under 50 degrees all the way down to the point it's starting to freeze, heck, especially when it's close to freezing.

You get to spend a great day on the water with family and friends and on top of that your personal best (Indiana). Very nice fish.

Nice! I always seem to catch the biggest one when I'm not prepared and not really trying hard. I'll be kicked back on the front deck of the boat in the beach chair enjoying a beer when something bites out of nowhere!

The technical term for that is "Deadsticking" :beer:

That's why when the wife fishes I almost always give her a fluke or senko if she gives it some action and fish are in the mood they bite. If she isn't paying attention and just letting it "dead stick" half the time I see her line moving side ways or going slack cause a fish is headed towards the boat and tell her to rip a lip haha. And most the time she does just as well as me when I'm trying a million things hoping to find a hotter bite. Not gonna lie I was on the sauce pretty good on this trip think I think I gave the river more tackle than what I caught lol.

I agree the fall is my favorite time that's when I get the most smallies out my rivers that are 15" plus is september-october when it starts to cool off. I've had some good days in november as well, but usually I get into hunting mode in november, and the fishing days become numbered unless we get an oddly warm day, and the water is nice low/clear. I have fished on opening day of gun season a number of times when it has been nice out as I usually like to have a dear bagged already before it with my bow. I've probably pissed off a number of hunters before going up and down the river in my boat bass fishing on what is opening day to most people.

Do you have damed up sections to that river or is it all fast water?

It has some dams but none of them are large enough to make much of a impounded body of water. They just slow up a short stretch really. One spot I frequently launch at is just above a low water dam, below the dam I have caught some smallies wading around. Above it never had much luck, the spotted bass are more abundant in the area above the dam, it's not till I get further upstream that I get into smallies consistently. Once you get further down from the dam the river gets really sandy smallies get scarce and spots are more abundant. Another area further down has an old hydro dam, but it isn't a big one it just slows the river in that section. That area is rocky, but the water is just always so stained and levels fluctuate so much it's ok for smallies, but not great. Below that said dam though can be really good for freshwater drum, which despite being chastised as a trash fish by many I love catching them. They pull like freight trains, just like their saltwater brethren the red fish.

That area above the hydro-dam, how long a stretch would you say you could run a prop boat in? I fish an area up stream of one of the earliest hydro plants in the country. A run of river setup where there is a diversion channel to the hydro station but it requires diverted natural current to feed it, there isn't any reservoir really behind it, though it does back up a few miles of river deep enough to run a boat in that is an average of 8ft +/- deep.

There is one section, perhaps a half mile long, about a mile up from the dam where there is an eddy and it gets to be between 12 and 20 ft deep before getting shallow again behind the dam. In the real cold, that stretch was absolutely lights out last December - 3 guys put 30+ quality smallies (14" - 18") in the boat in <2 hrs on multiple occasions. This water doesn't really hold much in the summer, I think the majority of the fish move upstream to the faster areas where there are rocks and riffles everywhere. But once the cold pushes them down it absolutely loads up.

If you're finding big fish in the summer you might be able to find a few giants if you can zero in on such an area in that basin.

unfortunately the stretch of river that has the old dam that once upon a time produced power doesn't really have a lot of bass. It has some, but just not that many. I say this when not too long ago a buddy and I were fishing down stream of dam hoping hybrids might be biting, and he got lucky and got a nice 17" largemouth in some rocky rip rap right on a current seem by a big eddy. That area I'm wanting to fish in the winter for sauger as I imagine they might get loaded up with the dam putting a stop a to their spawning migration upstream. I'm sure they probably congregate in that hole, along with who knows what other fish. I haven't fished upstream of the dam much cause it's pretty muddy/silty for the most part with some rock. Where I caught this bass was in a smaller river well upstream that comes together with another small river to form the one with dam I'm talking about. I can pretty well run my boat anywhere on the river I'm talking about it doens't have any water I can't get to with jet. The one this bass was caught on I could maybe get to in my boat, but it could be tricky in real low water.