Smallmouth bass fly fishing and trimming the fat.

Most of my followers know that I love panfish first and smallmouth bass secondly.  I have a lot of unnecessary posts about selling flies and some mumbo jumbo stuff to increase traffic.  This will make searching the blog more simple and stop dead end visits.  Posts will mostly be of panfish and smallies or fly tying.

I am going to repost pics of my smallies with some reflections of where and how I landed them.  This bass was caught on my Shucker fly (with schlappen) in late March or early April.  The current was swift from recent rains but the water wasn't up much higher than the norm.  The Shucker is a weighted fly and I was using floating line.  The fish was taken from a rocky pool with some medium sized boulders.  The waters depth is about 4.5 feet deep and tails out in a shallow area of about 20 feet wide and about 6-8 inches deep with riffles pouring out about 15 feet away into another swift area - therefore the bass are moving from this pool up another 100 yards before the stream becomes too shallow for the bass to  move during normal stream conditions.  This pool is the deepest in the area of the stream with an average of about 3 feet depth throughout most of this section of the water.

Although smallmouth bass can be caught from most of this 100 yard section, this pool seems to be where they hang out most.  I have caught them in shallow riffles and from along the banks.

Along about a 200 yard section of the stream, I landed 3 smallmouth bass on the Shucker and a few on a purple Crazydad pattern in about 6 hours of fishing.  It was pre-spawn action and those smallies were even taking my panfish flies.

I love this pattern - can't remember what I named it though.  Weighted bead head nymph.  I think it's the Stealth Bomber, lol.  But I took several not-so-big smallmouth bass on this pattern as I drifted it through that deep hole I previously mentioned.

"Large flies vs. smaller flies" - or "meat vs. traditional flies"  will probably be my next posting which will cover smallmouth bass.  I scoped out some water I've fished before which is currently having a slight algae bloom.  Hoping to land a few bucketmouths soon.  I'm mentally preparing myself for this fall when I will be chasing smallmouth bass again.

Tight lines!