Bass Fishing Idaho Swan Falls Reservoir Stokedness!!!

Bass Fishing Idaho? My co-worker and friend, Carsten White, told me about a small reservoir next to his home near Kuna, Idaho, which had been rumored to carry bass. If a place has bass, consider me there! We planned a trip out to Swan Falls Dam around the time I was visiting the Boise area for work with my company, Mountain Land Physical Therapy. Carsten and I launched his small aluminum boat with hopes we would release the “Kraken” on the Smallmouth Bass at Swan Falls Reservoir. Little did we know what a gem this lake is for catching Smallmouth Bass. Here is what we discovered, and how you can have some fast Smallmouth Bass action in Idaho.

Conditions:

Air temperature was pretty cool. We had our coats and gloves on, and the water was sitting around the 63-65 degree mark. We had a fairly stiff breeze about 10 mph the whole trip. The conditions forced us to use baits you could fish a little faster, allowing us to drift along the shorelines. The sky was overcast. We were in a small aluminum boat with an electric motor, and it was perfect for releasing the “Kraken” on the Swan Falls Smallmouth Bass.

Where we went:

Here is a map of some of the best shorelines and spots that we found held fish at this time of year. The key to our success was targeting the chunk-rock style shorelines.
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View Swan Falls Bass Fishing Spots in a larger map
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What we used:

We threw a few different baits, and these two seemed to work the best.

1. Smallie Beaver – The color that seemed to work the best was green pumpkin. I also threw the watermelon with red flake color, and it seemed to produce fish as well. Carsten definitely out fished me with the green pumpkin though. We Texas rigged the bait with a 1/4 oz bullet head and 3/0 hook. The key was slowly crawling it along the bottom. A lot of times we would just let our baits drift along the bottom while the wind pushed us along. This was by far the best bait, and the best way to present it to the fish on the trip.

2. Spinnerbait – This was the first bait I tied on, and I crushed a nice Smallmouth on only my third cast. At first, we used these a lot to try and locate the fish. If we caught a fish on spinner bait, we would go back and float through with the Smallie Beaver plastics. We used a Rippin Lips 1/2 oz ayu and the green shad colored baits. The key to getting bit was throwing the spinner bait close to the shoreline and swimming it back to the boat. Action wasn’t super-fast on spinner baits, but they caught fish.

How we did:

We crushed em! It was an awesome trip. We didn’t catch anything massive, but we caught a lot of fish. The Smallie Beavers worked like a charm. We ended the day with 30 fish between the two of us. It was a fun time. I’m looking forward to hitting this place up again. I couldn’t believe how stacked up the fish were, and how many there were. Plus, nobody was fishing for them. As mentioned, we didn’t catch anything huge; most of the fish were 12 – 15 inches. I’m sure there was a big one there holding out on us though.

We floated a couple shorelines chucking spinner baits, and picked up a few. Then we drifted back through those same shorelines with soft plastics and they just started jumping in the boat. The bite was super soft. I don’t recall a single bass every just swallowing up those Smallie Beavers. We had to let them have it when setting the hook anytime we felt a bump.

It was a really fun time. My first bass fishing trip in Idaho, and it turned out to be a success! Special thanks to my friend Carsten for letting me get in his boat, and scuttle us around. It was by far one of my most memorable days of work in Idaho.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions on what you can do to get releasing your “Kraken” on the Smallmouth Bass at Swan Falls Dam in Idaho. I highly recommend giving the place a visit.

As always,

Stay Stoked!
jb@krakenbass.com