Will I find largemouth in a tailwater below a dam, or out on the open mud basin?
Rarely — both are the edges of its world. A largemouth avoids fast flow, so in a tailwater it uses only the slack: eddies behind the wing walls, lock walls, riprap out of the current, and the mouths of backwaters, where moving water delivers bait and oxygen during the dog days. If a fish sits in the fast seam below a dam, expect a smallmouth or a walleye, not a largemouth. The open mud basin is the other non-address: this is a cover-and-edge fish, and a bare soft bottom offers it neither shade nor ambush. The one exception is real winter in northern lakes, when fish that have left the dead shallow weeds may settle along the soft base of the break below the old weedline and barely feed. Even then, look for the edge, not the middle.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Movement & range
Same topic, other species
- Is there a maximum depth for crappie? — Crappie
- Do muskie ever use really deep water — or sit on the bottom? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- How deep do perch schools go on big lakes? — Yellow Perch
- How deep is too deep for pike? — Northern Pike
- When are tailwaters productive for smallmouth? — Smallmouth Bass
- Do trout hug the bottom? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- Do walleye ever live deeper than 25 m (82 ft)? — Walleye