finding a new plastic for river smalls

[Chuckleberry FIN]

Back when I lived in east TN,  I fished the Little River a lot.  For plastic baits, I used a 4 inch single tail grub in "salt and pepper" color on a ball head jig.  Caught a lot of fish on it. 

[Botanophilia]

4" big foot toads work well in shallow rapids too.

[biglewers]

K grub 3.5 inch

[Jeff Little]

I was on the Susquehanna two days ago, and had an OK day with tubes.  But my buddy was throwing something similar to the 3.75 inch Zipper Drop Shot Worm on a 1/8 oz football head.  He got big for the day at 19.75 inches, went the following day and got a 20 inch smallmouth and a 22.5 inch walleye on the same rig.  I think that it would be even better on a 1/16th oz Shake It with Screw Loc.  Football heads are great when fishing reservoirs that don't have much rock and other snaggy areas like out Mid Atlantic rivers, but a small round head seems to do better.  Whatever you go with for river smallmouth, keep it simple, streamlined and relatively small.  They seem to question things with big flappy appendages that the largemouth seem to fall all over themselves about.

[ctom]

"....Whatever you go with for river smallmouth, keep it simple, streamlined and relatively small.  They seem to question things with big flappy appendages...." per Jeff Little

I tend to agree with this. Most of my smallies come along when I am crappie fishing. In the spring at ice-out on the lake near home I fish crappies using plastics no larger than 2", most in the 1.5" range, and catch smallies regularly. The water temps are hardly 35 degrees at this time. I'm not sure that the smallies I get on the river behind me on small plastics now in the winter would bother a bigger bait, but during that period in the spring they won't look at anything larger.