Searching for Smallmouth in Upstate New York

When most people think of New York they probably don’t first think of the rolling hills and deep crystal clear waters of the glacier carved “Upstate” region. This is their loss. The empire state hides some of the most beautiful country in the Northeast behind the bright lights and fast pace of the five burrows it is most famous for.

Nestled amongst these rolling hills, carved by glaciers from the last ice age, are deep crystal clear glacial lakes, home to some of the best Smallmouth Bass fishing in the United States. For the past couple years, once a year, I have been driving a couple hundred miles north with a close friend of mine, fishing out of a 16 foot flat bottom jon boat and sleeping in tents. It is a trip I most look forward to every year. The specifics of the trip may vary from year to year but the overarching objective remains constant, to put giant smallmouth in the boat.

Our first time venturing up north was August of 2019 and it started off concerningly slow. We were hammering the largemouth but just couldn’t seem to find a good smallmouth bite. Coming from fishing small ponds and lakes in Maryland, our knowledge of offshore fishing was extremely limited. I knew that the big brown fish liked deeper offshore structure but I couldn’t figure out what exactly that entailed on these giant lakes. We spent a good chunk of time spinning our wheels, fishing way too shallow around Islands and ending the first few days without bites. Fortunately we met another bass angler at the campsite who graciously pointed us in the right direction, find the offshore shoals and you’ll find the fish.

When the boat you're on doesn’t have gps, or anything besides down imaging at 200kHz you have to get creative to find the fish. It was then I had my first successful experience reading contour maps to find the shoals and getting on the fish. After finding the shoals on a contour map, I would have to triangulate the position based off shore landmarks before guiding us there via apple maps. It wasn’t pretty but it worked, sometimes. On occasion it took some hunting around a general area before getting on the sweet spot, especially when the wind churned up and visibility conditions declined.

Once we were on the “X” it was obvious. We would pick landmarks on the shore, marking the edge limits of the strike zone, and let the wind drift push us across the shoal. After testing out a few different presentations we settled on long fan casts around the shoal bouncing small jigs off the bottom, and we finally found success. Our first smallmouth came within five minutes of making the switch. An NFL football sized, three pound dark brown fish with bright green tiger stripes all over, the perfect representation of glacial lake smallmouth. Truly the picturesque fish we came all the way here to get in the net. Luckily, this success was not a one off, and we were able to repeat this process for the next few days over every shoal on Lake Oneida, setting the hook on over a dozen big bass.

Unlike any other freshwater fishing I had done in the past, the fish here seemed to come in waves. I suppose it was schools of small mouth moving onto the shoal to feed, but it happened in such predictable intervals. Every hour or so we would catch a handful of three or four pound smallmouth and then as suddenly as the bite turned on, twenty minutes later it shut off. I could only compare it to a bite picking up during rising and falling tides in saltwater. What was just as weird though, during those lulls in the smallmouth bite is when the freshwater drum moved onto the shoal. The trash can lid sized sheepshead would pull you halfway across the lake and go on a half dozen more runs as they neared the boat, a process that was only fun the first time before you immediately grew tired of dealing with the ugly fish. In addition to the drum we also hooked into another ugly fish during the time between bass bites. A fish that made it clear as to why these fish enjoyed the shell beds so much. Every few casts you would reel in your jig thinking it was covered in grass to find a three inch round goby speared on the end of your hook. If you know anything about fishing smallmouth you know these small forage fish have taken over as a favorite forage option for smallmouth since their accidental introduction in the 90’s. In short, find the gobies and you’ll find the fish, and just like that we picked up another key piece of the equation.

We caught our fill on Lake Oneida and the next stop was the St. Lawrence river in Alexandria Bay. I am well aware we violated the age old rule “Never leave fish to find fish”, but the goal of this trip was to explore new waters in a new place. Unfortunately we could not pick up the same success we had further south, and after three days of fishing the New York - Canadian border we failed to put smallmouth in the boat and left with only a couple green fish under our belts and tails between our legs.

The pandemic prevented us from returning the two following summers, leaving me with plenty of time to plan and stew over last year's trip. When 2022 finally rolled around with some sense of normalcy, I had my sights set on repeating what success we had and redeeming our failures. Like last time the trip started on Lake Oneida, and there our success only expanded, finding new pockets of fish on similar patterns and I even hooked into my first walleye.

At this point the great bite on Lake Oneida had already made the drive north worth it and I was beyond grateful for the experience, but there was something still nagging at me. It just so happened that the bass master tour had made a stop in Alexandria Bay the week prior, and after watching the pros consistently put five pound Alexandria Bay smallmouth in the boat the week prior, I desperately wanted in on the action.

Unlike the first trip to the St. Lawrence River, this time I did my homework. I scoured the contour maps ahead of time, dropping countless pins on submerged islands where the schools of fish can come up from the cool deep water that they enjoy during hot summer months, to feed and corral bait. The plan was to stay on top of those shallow humps and in tight to the islands with the steepest drop offs. There we would make long casts from the shallows with drop shot and ned rigs and slowly drag the baits up the shelf. A simple approach but finding the schools isn’t always so easy.

On day one we spent the morning dodging heavy boat traffic and wind around the tourist attractions while only boating one tiny half pound small mouth. Doubt began creeping in already, doubt that this trip might pass without success just as the one two years prior. With no foreseeable improvements in sight we pivoted, trailering the boat and driving twenty minutes up river to another launch with far less boat traffic and much better bottom structure. On day two we were on the water before the sun rose, surrounded by open water and only a handful of other fishing boats, a luxury we had not enjoyed in the thousand islands prior, it seemed we were finally in the right spot. Five minutes after setting up on the first spot with the sun just beginning to crest the horizon and light up the river, I was dragging a dropshot rig as slow as possible on the edge of a shallow hump surrounded by deep water, hoping a small fluke would do most of the work. As my bait was about halfway back to the boat my rod bent in half on my first Thousand Islands smallmouth bass. It was everything I hoped it to be, I was able to watch him come all the way up from deep in the crystal clear water, fighting like all healthy smallies do. As I pulled my first fish out of the water, the US-Canada border in the background, the countless hours of driving and planning were now well worth it. We were in the fish, pulling in quality bass every few casts, bouncing around the marked shoals and islands, anything with a rocky drop off held a good fish or two willing to chase plastics bounced across the rocks on the bottom. They weren’t the five and six pound giants we were hoping for but this small victory left us with a reason to come back next year, and our first foothold in the area.

What felt the most rewarding was seeing a direct correlation between time spent doing my homework on these fish and success catching them. The trip prior we drove all that way up there with the assumption catching these fish would be easy, that as soon as my line was in the water I would be on them. I was quickly humbled in 2019, but in 2022 I knew what it would take to have a successful trip, and hopefully in 2023 I’ll figure out what it will take to put giants in the boat.

The takeaway from this is that only a small portion of a trip’s success is based on your actions while actually at your destination. The real difference maker is the hours spent researching and preparing before you even hook the boat up. Had I not put in the time to highlight multiple points of interest, we might have hesitated to make the drastic spot switch and ended up spinning our wheels the rest of the trip in the tourist zone without success. Truthfully I can not imagine a scenario where one would regret spending the time researching how to achieve better success on a trip, and if you are going to spend the time and money traveling you might as well spend the time making sure you do it right. I am well aware of how cheesy that may sound but it's true, and I may as well double down on old clichés because if it is worth doing it is worth overdoing.