Any beginner recommendations for 'targeting' small mouth?

this time of year i find deep rockpiles? deep structure and drop shot them with finnesse worms. just find you a good rock hump and first make sure there is fish on it lol and throw you out a marker bouy and drop that drop shot down there.

works for me!

Drop shot with a 5" bold bluegill Robo worm. Also might try old faithfull, a 1/4oz bite me jig head and a green pumpkin tube. O yea go somewhere other than Texas to catch em, LOL a real smallie weighs 4-7lbs and Texas just dosent have somewhere that has a ton of em, yea Texoma, Whitney, Amistad, Belton, Stillhouse and a few others but go north, Erie, St. Clair, Table Rock, Kentucky lake, places like that is were you catch a 25-30 lb bag and get tired of catching 4lbers.

Snag,you're in G'town already. So make that short drive up 35 to Belton, and hit Belton Lake. It's chock full of smallies, and some good ones at that.

Smallies bite better in cooler water. They really get put off by this 90 degree plus temp. Water temps at 70 or below are ideal for them. Tube baits, drop shot, & jerk baits, such as a pointer 100 are mainstay. Cody Malone is right....... no better pond than Erie or St. Clair. I used to live a stone's throw away from each and spent weeks fishing each one each year. Normally when you find one four pounder, there are more with it. Pound for pound, you'd be hard pressed to find another freshwater fish that can pull as hard as a smallie.

just gop deeper than normal on humps points and ledges, when you find them you wont be dissapointed

Belton smallmouths are biting right now. Just fish from dusk and after dark in the main lake. Rock points, boatramps, and any coves are good. You can catch them during the day on deep points and structure with a rig like mentioned above.

Use tx rigs with a powerworm or crawworm, 1/4-1/2 oz jigs, spinnerbaits with single colorado blade, and crankbaits. We caught about ten smallmouth and 30 blacks last night, biggest smallmouth was around 4 1/4 lbs.

Belton is probably the best opportunity in Texas for numbers of them in the summertime, its also got some pretty good ones. Your chances of catching one up to 5 lbs is pretty good if you put the time in. Nighttime is definately best right now, they'll get right up on the bank and up shallow on red clay points.

At night throw that colorado spinnerbait in black, I think it was strike king that used to make one called the midnight special booyah also makes a good one. Did the golden algae wipe out all the smallies in Whitney ?

go to lake erie

there are still some there but not anything like it used to be..