I could smell the beds but no bream!

I fished a new lake today that is known for its bream. I used my typical method of smelling the strong odor they emit when on beds and then I use my sidescan to more accurately pinpoint where they are. I ended up smelling about 5 or 6 beds but I noticed that I didn’t see any white spots on the beds (which is usually how bream show up when they are sitting on the beds). But I fished the beds anyway and only ended up catching two big males the entire day. Has anyone else ever experienced this? Smelling the strong bream bed odor but no fish being on the beds? It’s the first time this has happened to me. Since it’s known as a bream lake and relatively small I figured maybe other folks had already cleaned them out or the fish had already spawned but the odor was still present.

I have tried and tried to find them by smell but have never been able to locate them that way.
but have found tons of fish By dragging a short piece of worm/night crawler on a lite hook and a small split shot thru the area !
also I do love finding them with SI but that gets difficult quickly here with all the grass .
Gills/ crackers just started showing up here Friday morning and has got better every day. Still finding 67-69° bottom temps Friday evening.
lots of fish still not on beds where I normally catch them on bed in early April!
I have smelt crappie the same way as gills so that maybe what your smelling and they maybe out just a little deeper!
stay after them with the warm nights it will get really good quick.

Yep it’s been a crazy spring with all the rain and cold fronts. I was catching male crappie in 1-2ft of water a few days ago. This time last year the crappie were already done and I was catching bream on beds. And that worm technique sounds like a good way to find them. I use to try something like that with beetle spins before I got sidescan.

Spawning fish do have a distinct smell. I have smelled it some this year

I too like slow rolling a spinnerbait of some style to find em and then zero in. Lots of the areas I’ve found em bedding in past years are choked with floating weeds now. I smelled some Sunday morning but too stiff a wind for me to follow it.

Did smell some in SC on lakes Santee Cooper and Greenwood where I fished as a kid. My father could sure sniff them out. I have not noticed any bedding smell here in E TN but always sniffing around in hopes of finding them.

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Originally Posted by StantheMan2567

Did smell some in SC on lakes Santee Cooper and Greenwood where I fished as a kid. My father could sure sniff them out. I have not noticed any bedding smell here in E TN but always sniffing around in hopes of finding them.

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I have smelled it in the shallow back waters a few times this year

I do know it some spots it smells fishy more than others to me , but as far as smelling bedded fish not yet

Always heard that fishy odor was bedding fish. Seems to hold true. I have only smelled it in the spring

I smelled them several times Saturday on the river. We did manage to find two beds we were smelling but the wind was all over the place which makes it almost impossible to zero in on them.
Attachment 426517

That's a good one

Attachment 426556I have side scan but it does not seem to work where I fish due to the hydrilla, pads and other grasses. So I fish old school by smelling and looking for grass or pad movement when the big brim run off the small fish. I went brim fishing Sunday morning in North Central Florida. I slowly drove around a few pad beds hoping to smell some fish on beds, I caught a slight smell of fish but could not get on the smell again..so I shut off motor and coasted to a stop into a pad bed.. I saw a few pads bumping all around me and knew I got lucky and had beds under my boat. I got out two 10 ft fiberglass cane poles, one with 6lb line the other with 8 lb flurocarbon line, 7 ft of line on each pole, #6 hook no weight or float. fished one pole since pads were pretty thick. Bite was on and off for a couple of hours, I caught at least 60 fish, culled some and had to keep 7 gut hooked mid sized brim, I ended up with 39 brim, 3 specks and 1 cat fish. . I was catching some good Copper nose brim along with small bass, small warmouth, small crappie/specks and some big line breaking - hook straightening fish..I did land a nice speckled cat fish so that was likely what was causing a lot of the issues with the hooks.. I only moved 20- 30 ft max since I was catching enough to keep me interested.. most of my keepers were over 9 inches and up to 10 inches long. Heard a few Bull Gators doing their breeding calls but not as many as 3 weeks ago.. it was a nice morning to be on the lake