Will a smallmouth eat frogs, mice, fish eggs or a dead baitfish?
Frogs, sometimes; the rest, almost never. A smallmouth lives on rock and open water, not in lily pads, so it meets few frogs — river fish along grassy banks take a small one when it lands in front of them, and that is about all. Mice and ducklings have no real place in the diet; its surface strikes are aimed at baitfish and insects. Fish eggs are the reverse story: the smallmouth is the one being robbed, by gobies, crayfish and sunfish that swarm an unguarded bed. Dead food is a cold-water footnote — like the largemouth, a smallmouth will pick a dying baitfish off bottom when its metabolism is low, but it is a hunter of moving prey, and a moving bait beats a still one whenever fish are active.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Diet
- How important are crayfish to smallmouth, really?
- What is the round goby story in the Great Lakes?
- Do smallmouth feed on the surface?
- What do young smallmouth eat before they switch to fish and craws?
- Which baitfish matter most — smelt, alewife, perch?
- Why do smaller baits often outfish big ones for smallmouth?
- What do smallmouth eat in winter?
- Do smallmouth really eat leeches and hellgrammites?
- Do smallmouth eat sunfish, young suckers — or other bass?
Same topic, other species
- Do crappie ever stop eating zooplankton? — Crappie
- What do largemouth actually eat? — Largemouth Bass
- What do muskie actually eat? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- What do yellow perch actually eat? — Yellow Perch
- What do pike actually eat most? — Northern Pike
- How does a trout's diet change as it grows? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- What do walleye mainly eat? — Walleye