Priest/Stones River Smallie Advice
 

I keep reading about the smallmouth bite on priest and the stones river but I have had zero luck this year. I have thrown everything I have at them with no luck. I would greatly appreciate any advice as all I am catching is LM or spots.

I have thrown 1.5 cranks, shaky head trick worms, Texas rigs, chatterbaits and Ned rigs. Brush piles, lay downs and a few bluffs have been my focus but I just can't seem to find them.

Try more rocky areas. Rocky points, humps, ledges, ect. Year round my smallmouth have come from rocky areas.
Right baits, just tweak your locations slightly.

Lol. We need to put our heads together. I have been crushing the smallmouth on JPP the last couple of weeks. I haven't hardly caught any largemouth and no good ones but I've wore out the smallmouth. I've been catching them on a half ounce football jig, texas rigged tube, and a texas rigged grub. All in a variation of green pumpkin. Ive been catching them in 5-10 feet of water on the edge of basically anything flat. It could be something flat on the bank that drops off or out off of a flatter point. But they have been hanging in the shallows right on a break or drop off. I've been catching them in the first 3rd or so of the creeks. The ends of a few boat ramps have been loaded with them.

I've caught a lot of smallmouth on JPP lately. What I've noticed where I'm catching the smallmouth numbers consistently is there's big rock leading off the bank not on the bank and has a gradual depth increase until the rock stops and then there's a flat at the end of the rock for a distance until it drops off fast and deep. On that flat from the edge of that drop up to where the rock starts has been some real good smallmouth lately. Usually I catch smallies amongst the rocks but lately they've been gorging in that flat/trough section I described. Hope that helps some...
I don't fish for smallmouth in the lakes much because I grew up wading the creeks catching them and that'll spoil you... Catch 30+ in a afternoon and half of them you get to sight fish and watch them come crush your bait! Then the chaos of 3-6 more frenzied smallmouth chasing the one you just hooked trying to eat the bait hanging out its mouth and your freaking out because there's a fired up five pounder with them and you only hooked a 1-2lber but you get to watch it all happen right in front of you and the best part NO PEOPLE!!!! Lol