Had a good day fishing for smallmouth bass. The bass are in a post spawn pattern. To my way of thinking this means the fish can be scattered. The bass were all over the lake. We caught them on poppers,streamers and crayfish patterns. Most of the fish seemed to be holding in 6-9 feet of water. Popper fishing was best around vegetation and shade on the steeper banks. streamers worked fairly well on windblown banks. They wanted a fairly steady retrieve. Clouser minnows and Flash tailed Whistlers were the two best patterns for streamers. By far the most productive fly was a crayfish pattern in a tan color. We fished these on a 10' sink tip using a Reddington Predator #7 weight. What a fabulous series of rods these have turned out to be! I fell in love with the 8 weight while fishing for Peacock bass in Brazil. I now own the Predators in 6-8 weight. Sorry for breaking my train of thought….The best color fly was tan with yellow lead eyes. The biggest fish were caught off of rocky flats near deep water. They did not want the fly "crawling" but rather moving steadily, just ticking the rocky bottom. We caught some pretty bluegill using the same flies. The sun was very bright with water temps in the high 70's. Winds were from the south at 10-15 mph. Very high pressure which usually means tough smallie fishing but this time we were lucky. The largest fish we boated was 4 pounds. Most were 1.5-2.5lbs. Total caught for the day was approx. 30-40 fish.
fly rod smallmouth
