Smallmouth on the Fly. Fly fishing for bass.

Just sitting here enjoying my coffee with some sort of egg and sausage casserole my wife baked . . . just dwelling on today's highlights. It wasn't a great day. Heck, the water temperature dropped darn near 20 degrees in a week. Fall hit us like that darn drought. Well, I hope it's Fall. I finally strapped on the ol' waders and hit the frigid stream.

Warmed up playing with some sunfish and bream. I crept onto a long stretch of smooth shale with some deep pools, hoping to play some bass with a crawdad I had tied on. I landed a few small bass and lost a decent one too.

As the weather began to warm up and the clouds rolled in from the east, I made my way to the secret spot . . . MY secret spot which nobody will ever find out about . . . ever. For now, he he. With my crawdad pattern, I was using floating line. The leader was short, so I piddled around a deep pool until I lost that darn thing.

So, I tied on a Rainy's Cricket. I got some of these flies from my dad about 4 years ago and have never used them. I landed a few small Ozark bass and a Shadow bass or two. Not much action as the past few weekends on this spot. I decided to make my way back upstream to drift the cricket. But before I left this spot, I slapped it down near the edge of where the deep pool turns shallow and the stream slows down a bit. SLAM! A bass leaped out of the water as it hammered my fly. I pulled back and he jumped back out of the water again. DANG! A beauty. Since I had lost a few big ones recently, I decided to play this fish out. It took about 10 minutes but I think he still wanted to play.

Yup, I was happy. So, I ended up losing that cricket in some rocks across the stream. I decided to put on my sinking line and tie on a chartreuse Clouser. Yep, landed a few more bream and smaller bass.

The wind changed direction and clouds were now coming in from the Northeast. I decided to hike back to the truck, as the wind was getting colder and clouds began to grow and darken.

Trying not to doze off, I sip on my coffee and nibble on my Snackimals . . . just thinking of how much time I have left before Mother Nature brings her chilled reminder of the holidays and it's droll responsibilities.