By Andrew Ragas Much has been studied, discussed, and written about in recent years about fall season river migrations when smallmouth travel downstream to their overwintering sites. On your river, smallmouth could be year-round residents. On my specific rivers in Wisconsin, most of their smallmouth populations are non-resident. Through personal experience and data to now support my findings, little has been shared about upstream spring migrations from flowage to river, ice-out to pre-spawn. Nearly 10 years ago, I was able to first connect the dots to my favorite river system and its tributaries. Without much known DNR data to support my own theories, I sought out to understand why my favorite pools of the river system were loaded in May and June and mostly devoid of smallmouth thereafter. I struggled to understand why my river smallmouths were in abundance for 4 weeks out of the year, and then no longer present. Considering I’m always floating somewhere in between two flowages, often with one usually located both upstream and downstream of me, it dwelled on me how highly migratory riverine smallmouth bass can be. If free to navigate without obstructions, they’l