Fort Peck Summer Smallmouth Bass

Summertime on Fort Peck I typically fish deeper structure looking for smallmouth bass schools that are out eating offshore Cisco. Graphing fish and dropping to them with a drop shot rig is hard to beat. I’d recommend either matching the color of Cisco very closely or just going the opposite to help the bait stand out and using something like reds and pinks. Experiment with baits and retrieves based off their moods which can change very quickly. Keeping a topwater handy for active schools busting on the surface can produce, as well as flukes, swimbaits, wacky rigs/neko rigs. Shallow bites can be good at times especially low light. I like a whopper plopper 130 and a lipless crank in and around big boulders or weed beds.