Nothing worse in spring pre-spawn fishing than the sights of conditioned smallmouths. No matter what you throw, they won’t budge. How else can you tell smallmouths have been negatively conditioned by fishing pressure when they’re being lookers instead of hookers?

This is happening more now. At every lake. You know when the fishery is conditioned when spots that were automatic in the past are occupied with smallmouths who could care less to bite.

The first notable experience of lure conditioning occurred on a May 2024 trip with Jason Norris.

That morning, Jason and I pulled up to a few longtime favorite sand bars that collect smallmouths when the sun is shining high and beating down on the warm heat conductor.

We beat those mid lake sand bars to death with X-Rap 08’s, hair jigs, 4-inch Diezel MinnowZ, and soft jerk minnows. Fish were home, we saw packs of them with our own eyes too, but they wanted none of them. Stubbornly, we stayed atop those spots for far too long just to coax a reluctant biter from each. To Jason, it was worth the wait as he caught a pair of 18’s and 19’s. To me, it was utter disappointment because if the lake was anything like it was during the mid-2000’s, we would have caught several dozen smallmouths on X-Raps and this lake would have kept us busy all afternoon.  

But thanks to massive overuse, they’ve simply lost their luster. 

Since its creation, from ice out until spawn, the Hot Head X-Rap 08 was catching most of our pre-spawn smallmouths. It caught thousands of smallmouths over the years. As fish grew used to the color, sometimes seeing it daily, other color patterns in the X-Rap family eventually emerged.

Then Hot Mustard Muddler became the next hot bait. It was catching big smallmouths on all lakes inhabited with yellow perch and uniquely log perch. It still catches them good on some days but is no longer the guarantee it used to be from its peak in 2015-2020.

On a related note, at one specific trophy lake I fish several times per year, Rusty Craw was once the top X-Rap flavor for its fish. Not anymore, and that lake now receives triple the number of boats that it once did (thank you YouTube and Instagram).

Today, the best all-around X-Rap color for us is Hot Pink. It catches them good on some days, but bites are limited to clear lakes that are inhabited by smelt and ciscoes, or some dark water lake or flowage where the pink and white turns to orange and yellow shades underwater giving smallmouths a different look. I don’t expect this color’s effectiveness to last much longer. Others are now throwing Hot Pink too. Soon, every catchable smallmouth will have seen that one.

Through the years, our catch rates on X-Raps and other suspending jerkbaits have noticeably lessened. There was a time when I could go to any trophy smallmouth fishery in Vilas County and catch a handful of 20’s on a variety of natural minnow patterned suspending jerkbaits. Those days are mostly done. Smallmouths have now touched far too many treble hooks.

Zero doubts that suspending jerkbaits no longer have their appeal and the same fish catching powers they once possessed 5-10-15 years ago.

Conditioning to Lures

Throughout the 2000’s till the 2010’s, it was far more common – daily then – to see a dozen or more smallmouths following a hooked fish back to the boat than it is now. On a good day, you’ll still see two or three of them competing for the same X-Rap, but most days you won’t.

The popularity of smallmouth fishing exploded here between 2015-2020. It all began changing quickly with the growth of YouTube and social media in the 2010’s. Then the popularity of inland Wisconsin smallmouth fishing grew even further when Wisconsin permitted culling shortly after – allowing an influx of tournaments to participate in greater number, which brought lots more anglers here. Coinciding with those regulation changes, the glitter boats now travel northward for smallmouths every weekend in May and June for bed fishing trips. On most Vilas County smallmouth fisheries, angling effort has increased tenfold and even further since covid 2020 year when everyone seemingly went fishing that year.

Smallmouths are still present and prevalent in our lakes, but who knows what percentage of them survives from getting caught repeatedly each year, mishandling, delayed mortality, or displacement because of derbies. Troubling, our lakes have fewer 20-inch fish in them now too.  

Intense spring fishing pressure has changed smallmouth behavior, as these fish are no longer curious and social. Instead, they’re becoming anti-social.

Smallmouths are experts in sensory detection. Nowadays, more adult smallmouths are wary of overhead boat traffic and high-powered sonar. Deploy your FFS transducer in forward mode, and those smallmouths scatter and disperse from the boat, or choose to lay low to the bottom. They’ve become elusive and uncatchable as a result. We saw this happening below the boat after I got my Active Target 2 all set up. Knowing how it negatively impacts and disperses smallmouths away from the boat, I refuse to fish with it on.

Therefore, have smallmouths learned to avoid us?

I think they have. Fishing pressure has conditioned smallmouths to the point of ignoring X-Raps in spring. Despite being non-elusive, there is evidence in my observations that smallmouths learn to avoid anglers and boats altogether, and even specific lures if they’ve seen too much of them.

Due to their cognitive abilities, I also believe smallmouths remember the experience of getting caught. Hook damage from barbed treble hooks, getting overplayed to exhaustion, mishandling, getting scooped into the net only to flop around along the boat’s floor, getting livewelled all day long, and abuse as a result from getting caught are some major reasons why they shouldn’t want to get caught again. I hope fish learn from those experiences. Big fish are supposed to get big by avoiding lures and anglers altogether – at least that was once the logic.

As adult fish are repeatedly caught and released throughout their lifetime, they learn not to strike certain lures. Case in point, X-Rap. I can no longer rely on them daily and in different colors like I once did.

Spring smallmouth traffic has exploded in recent years. Gone are the days of being the only boat on the water in May. Fish that customers and I once had to ourselves are getting hit harder now. Fisheries are taking a beating, and smallmouths are becoming better educated as a result.

And because of this, you should start throwing something else other than an X-Rap. The 5-pounder Jason holds below fell for a paddletail instead. 

Andrew Ragas splits time between the Chicago area and Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Based in Minocqua, WI, he specializes in trophy bass fishing and offers guided trips from May thru October. While big bass is the passion, he dabbles in multi-species as well. He may be visited online at www.northwoodsbass.com