Skeet Reese vs. Smallmouth

ALPENA, MI – It’s been a long, gradual learning curve for Skeet Reese, but after earning his first-ever MLF win – at the 2018 Wiley X Summit Cup in Alpena, Michigan – the northern California veteran can now also claim another first: his first major win on smallmouth.

Reese, the 2007 Elite Series Angler of the Year and 2009 Bassmaster Classic champion, has racked up eight B.A.S.S. wins on fisheries from Arizona to Maryland, but his Summit Cup Championship Round domination on northern Michigan’s Long Lake marked the first time he’s won a major title catching just bronzebacks.

“A ‘natural’ smallmouth fisherman I am not,” Reese jokes. “I think I understand them a lot better now than I used to, but they’ve never really been easy for me. I just didn’t fish for them a lot growing up, so I’ve had to figure them out over time. I like catching them, I just can’t say that I’m all that good at it.”

Reese’s Alpena competitors would protest otherwise. He caught 13 smallmouth for 31 pounds to win his Elimination Round on Hubbard Lake, went 10-out-of-12 on smallies in his Sudden Death Round on Fletcher Pond, and then jacked 17 smallmouth for 40-11 and a 10-pound victory in the final round.

And he did much of his SCORETRACKER work on baits and techniques that would seem to better fit his largemouth sensibilities.

Reese drop-shot a 3-inch finesse worm in the Elimination Round, but then leaned heavily on a vibrating jig and green-pumpkin trailer in Sudden Death and the Championship Round, and picked off a handful of fish cranking a Lucky Craft Pointer Minnow and swimming a jig.

“I’ve found out that you can power fish for smallmouth quite a bit,” Reese observes. “There are times where finesse is definitely the deal, but I don’t think you can beat anybody with finesse if they’re aggressive and eating reaction baits like a spinnerbait, chatterbait or topwater.”

Reese was able to adjust to fish being on the move, too, especially in the Championship Round. He had originally planned on fishing grass on the south end of Long Lake, but ended up targeting small offshore rocks on the north end in Period 1 and then moving back and forth between the two for the rest of the day.

“The one thing that I’ve finally gotten better adjusted to is how much smallmouth roam, and how much you have to keep looking for new water and new fish,” Reese says. “Typically with largemouth, you can find pieces of structure and want to grind it out, but smallmouth can get on these flats and really be spread out. You have to be a little more open-minded to find fish.”