My close friends from Wisconsin Bob and Jenni paid me a visit to chase some big mid-April smallies on the Little Pigeon and French Broad Rivers. We started fishing late in the morning with light winds and clear skies. A few fish were boated, but then we had some cloud cover move in and the big fish started to feed. Over the period of about an hour they caught approximately a dozen big smallies ranging from 18 to 21 1/2 in. The majority of those fish were caught by Jenni (pictured above) as she had the hot hand and could do no wrong in bringing one big smallie in after an other. Then the clouds melted away and the bright sunshine returned and the bite changed back to a fish here and there. I have seen this happen time and time again over my decades of fishing of how the bite can improve very quickly with the aid of a little cloud cover. Bob and Jenni fished hard and after approximately nine hours of fishing caught 36 smallies.
Cloud Cover Smallmouth
