If you were under pressure to catch an eighteen inch smallmouth, where would you go?  I know where I would go.  As a matter of fact, the first five or six places I can think of are all drainage ditches.  The same would go for numbers.  If I needed twenty bass in just a few hours, I’d hit the ditches.  

Drainage ditches?  Did you read that correctly?  Aren’t they totally devoid of fish? You’re right twice - well almost.  Yes, I did say drainage ditches, and fish-holding habitat is very hard to find in  these ditches.  But smallmouth can still find it.  Maybe it’s their instinct to populate a river system completely.  Chances are that if there’s a big river near you with a good population of smallmouths,  every creek or drainage ditch that connects with it also contains smallmouths, if only for part of the year.  This article primarily covers drainage ditches that have been dredged and straightened, but if you’ve ever fished ditches and creeks in Illinois you’ll know it’s common to have one section dredged and straightened and another one left in its natural state.  Throughout this article I’ll use the words creek and ditch interchangeably.  The big difference is that there are less fish in a dredged ditch, and less fish-holding habitat.  But when you do find good fish habitat, the fish will be very concentrated.  In a small creek there are more fish, but they are spread out more, as there is more usable habitat available.  Which of these is better?  You decide.  

What’s the appeal of drainage ditches?  It might be that they are so unappealing.  I’ve gone years without running into another fisherman on some of these ditches.  You might see some evidence of local farm kids at the bridges, but walk a half a mile and you’ll have it all to yourself  and fishing can be so good you’ll think you’re at a remote lake or stream in Canada.  

Where and when do we get started?  The best place to start is close to home.  This makes it easy to spend more time fishing than driving, although it does take some discipline to fight the urge of the “grass is always greener elsewhere, lets fish somewhere far away” syndrome.  If you have a river or creek that has a good population of smallmouths,  try to start right where the drainage ditch or smaller creek connects with it.  Then start zig-zagging your way upstream, checking every bridge as you go along.  A good county map is helpful to keep from getting lost, and also for writing notes about what you observe.  My kids can tell you stories about dad having to stop the car and get out to check the local creeks.  I call this “taking the long way home”.   Maybe its the explorer in me, but put me in the car with my thermos, some sandwiches and maps, and I could stay out for weeks.  Pure heaven.  As you go along, you’ll see how the ditch’s personality changes and this is something I love about all river fishing.  Move up or down several miles, it changes.  Come back a year from now, things will be different.  Come back in high or low water and it will be different still again.  And the most amazing thing is that Mr. Smallmouth is pretty much unaffected in that he uses what habitat is available the best he can to survive.  I never appreciated how tough a fish must be until I considered how much the environment changes in a river, especially a drainage ditch.  

Here are some things you may want to take note of:  How wide is the ditch? How deep?  What’s the bottom like, sand mud, gravel, boulders, riprap areas?  Are there trees on the banks or has the ditch been clear-cut?  Do you see any fish?  If you see some smallies under the bridge this is a good thing.  Put the maps away and break out the tackle.  If you don’t see any fish, don’t be discouraged.  It could be that your timing is wrong.  There are very few places in ditches that I fish where the fish will overwinter.  So for the most part these fish come up from a main river or creek to spawn and if the water stays high they’ll stay all summer into fall.  Why leave when there’s plenty of food and water?  

Remember, there is no reason to fish for spawning bass. Since they don’t all spawn at once,  there are always a few fish in the adjacent deep water that can be caught without affecting future fish populations.  I figure these fish have a tough enough life as it is; pulling them off their nests only makes it harder and surely hurts future fishing.  One thing I try to do is to keep a notebook year to year, and eventually you’ll see fish making nests in the same places, possibly the same fish.  This is almost as much fun as fishing.   So when do they arrive to start spawning?  Checking my notes I can see that some years, the fish show up as early as March, others as late as July.  Sometimes during a dry year like this one there is hardly a migration to the ditches at all.  A warm spring with a lot of rain  will usually see an early  migration.  It is beneficial to have a test creek that you know the fish use, preferably with a good spot near a bridge so you can easily check it regularly to see when they arrive.  When they start to show up in your test creek, then grab the maps and sandwiches and head out to new waters.  

Starting at the mouth of a creek or ditch where it meets a big river can sometimes be discouraging.  It looks so shallow and sandy, how could there be any fish upstream?  I thought this way for years and rarely bothered with small ditches.  Water, I found out, is a very funny thing.  Sometimes five or ten miles upstream the ditch is much narrower, but it’s three to four feet deep and full of smallmouths.  Now, why is this?  I’ve been meaning to get a book on hydrology, but here’s what I think has been going on.  When a small creek gets into the flood plain of a bigger river, it is almost always very shallow and sandy.  This is because the big river has already moved back and forth between the river bluffs, so the little creek is just cutting through the sand the big river left behind.  But follow that little creek out of the flood plain and onto the upland prairie and now it’s cutting its own path and able to dig deeper holes even though it is much narrower.  Obviously geology comes into play here too.  I can think of stretches of drainage ditch where it just runs pure sand for miles but then all of a sudden one section will turn into cobblestone.  This is where the smallmouths will be, of course, and finding sections like this will involve a lot of walking.  As you are moving upstream, typically the ditch will become narrower.  If the ditch has been dug too wide, though,  you may end up with only a few inches of water.  If you can find deep sections in these wide ditches, they will hold fish but quite often what is needed is to travel upstream to the next bridge to find a place where the ditch is narrower.  Even though you would think there is less water upstream, because it is going through a much narrower area,  the potential for deep water occurs.  The force of spring floodwaters traveling through these very narrow sections digs the deep holes. One final note to make this clearer;  there is one ditch near my house that dries up completely at the mouth practically every year.  The local kids drive their minibikes up and down in the sand.  But upstream five miles there are a couple of pools.  Maybe they are spring fed, I don’t know, but there is always a fish migration into this creek, and every year these pools are loaded with five to eight inch baby smallmouths, just like a fish hatchery.  

So we’re headed upstream, hopefully to some deeper water.  The first place to check is the dams.  If you know a dam on a little creek, check it out.  I know a few and they are great.  But what I’m really talking about are road bridges.  Somebody once told me that every road bridge acts like a dam in high water.  This information changed the way I looked at bridges forever.  During flood conditions the water is backed up behind the bridge and forced through a small opening.  This scours out the hard bottom and sometimes creates a deep hole with eddies below and a lift area above the bridge.  Starting to sound like smallmouth habitat, isn’t it?  We could also throw in an tree and an abandoned appliance, but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Railroad bridges are very good, and Illinois is blessed with lots of them.  In order to carry the weight of a train, a lot of rock is dumped around the bridge, again making nice habitat for Mr. Smallmouth.  I’ve often said that I could make a career out of fishing bridges, and will do some articles on that in the future.  One thing I have to mention is that when you fish a new bridge, always look for where the old bridge was that it replaces.  Quite often there are wooden pilings or stone blocks left in the water from the old bridge that will hold fish.  

After bridges, the next thing I look for are bends in our straightened creek.  Because the creek is straight, when it finally does turn there is quite a bit of force involved.  This causes the current to dig a deep hole on the outside bend and it will continue to dig and erode until it hits something hard.  This is the reason that outside bends are often riprapped with rock or cement.  Smallmouths love these areas.  The next best thing on turns is natural rock, gravel, or clay.  All of these areas will hold smallmouths, too. 

The next area of potential is where two ditches meet.  The combined force of these two meeting again digs out a deeper area that provides a home for Mr. Smallmouth.  One example comes to mind, when I fished d a newly dredged area on a drainage ditch near my house.  The banks were so steep the only way I could get down into the ditch was through a little three foot wide gully created by a small stream entering the larger creek.  My walking in the small stream muddied up the adjacent deep hole formed by the little stream.  I fished the newly dredged ditch and caught a bunch of real small bass, and maybe one decent one.  But what really stands out to me is that on the way out, I caught an eighteen and a seventeen inch smallmouth on two consecutive casts out of a hole the size of my kitchen table, the same hole I’d muddied up on my way in.  Along with the deeper hole formed by the two currents meeting, also look for sand or gravel bars to be created and fish the resulting current cuts.  

One final area to take note of on ditches is sewer treatment outfalls.  Pretty much every decent sized town has a sewage treatment plant and they are all worth checking out.  If the water coming out is not totally clean or contains a lot of chlorine, it can take several miles for the river to clean itself up and the chlorine to dissipate.  However, if the water is clean, good fishing can start immediately at the sewage plant.  Fishing below a sewer plant may not sound like the best place to pursue smallies, but here are some things to consider.  You have a constant flow of water; this is very important during drought years.  You have fifty degree water flowing year-round, which extends the growing season and allows for top water fishing in January.  You have a constant  source of clear water which can save you when all the other creeks around are recovering from a spring flood.  And most important, because of the added nutrients you have a ten foot wide creek with the fertility of a fifty foot wide river, which makes for big fish.  Fish the deep holes near the outfall or where the water finally cleans up and you can be in for some really great fishing.  

These features, bridges, bends, confluences, and sewer plants, can all be seen from your maps and you can plan a route to check before you leave home.   My motto is, “You won’t know if you don’t go.”  Nothing beats getting into a ditch with ankle-deep water and walking for  half mile, no fish anywhere, but when you hit the first outside bend that you saw on your map, it’s loaded with fish.  

Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to force yourself to try new areas.  I always try to fish a new spot each time I go out if time allows, and then hit an old reliable.  I’m now at the point where I expect to find good new spots regularly.  This can create a problem when you have forty or fifty possible areas to check out and only one day to fish, but this is a good problem.  Trying new areas regularly gives the fish in your old spots a break. And, by not parking and fishing in the same place over and over again, you’re not as likely to advertise the location of your hot spots.  

After you’ve gotten in and fished the obvious places, the extreme lack of change in a straightened ditch makes anything different worth fishing.  If it breaks the current and thus creates a deeper hole behind it, there is a chance that fish will be there.  I’ve caught some real nice bass off of abandoned appliances.  I’ve seen fifteen inch smallmouths with their heads inside clay pipes and their tails sticking out like ostriches.  One time a friend of mine and I caught fish after fish out from under a sheet of plywood until one of us hooked it and we watched in horror as our newfound hot spot floated off downstream.  Any type of tree, tree root, or wood are all good bets.  Any place a drain tile pours into the ditch will also create a deep hole.  The deeper and more isolated these holes are, the better your chances of hitting a smallmouth nirvana.  The real danger with drainage ditch fishing is that it is so easy to read the water and find fish that when you finally do fish a big river you expect every rock or tree to hold a fish, and quite often you are used to being able to cover 100% of the water.  I know this is true;  it’s happened to me.  There are more rocks in some sections of the Kankakee River than in the whole county of ditches near my house.  But put me in a slow sandy section of a big river, where the whole thing looks the same, and all my drainage ditch experience will kick in.  I’ll head for outside bends with wood or rock and I’ll be into fish in no time.  

After you’ve located some good spots to fish, what are the best lures to use?  Pretty much anything that works anywhere else will work in drainage ditches.  In fact, they can be a good place to test lures because the water tends to have such good visibility.  Several small creeks I fish are so narrow that pretty  much all you can do is kneel and cast sidearm because of overhanging trees.  Even though it’s a hassle to fight through the brush on these creeks,  it can be 100 degrees out and sunny but these fish that are in the shade year round are always eager to hit top water lures. Be sure to bring some mosquito repellant as they are also biting year-round.  A good supply of weedless jigs can also help you in these wood-filled creeks.  

So there you have it.  Find a dredged and straightened ditch that gets a migration of fish, hit it at the right time, focus on isolated deep holes  by bridges, bends, confluences, and  sewer plants, and your eighteen inch smallie might be there along with a bunch of his friends.  I hope this will encourage you to get out and explore some of the ditches near your home.  Remember, you won’t know if you don’t go