Planning a trip in October

[Kansas Fly Fisher]

A buddy and mine are planning a one day fly trip to the little Piney for small mouths. I've never fished for them using fly's. Any suggestions as to the fly, places, techniques, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

John

[riverrat]

Hi John, the Little Piney is in my backyard and close to my heart. It's where I learned to swim and where I caught my first smallmouth. I would ask that no one post locations on this forum to such a small stream. I have a lot of fishing buddies that wade fish it regularly. If you'll give me about a week I'll ask my buddies about locations and P.M. you. I don't flyfish so someone else will have to help him in that area. Riverrat

[Kansas Fly Fisher]

Thanks. I'll look forward to hearing from you.

John

[riverrat]

John, I sent you a PM. Does anyone have suggestions for flies and techniques on a small, clear stream for smallmouth in October? By the way John what made you choose the Little Piney? Its a long way from Kansas.

[Kansas Fly Fisher]

Got the PM. I'll give you a call when we get the date set. We picked it because a friend of mine works on the EagleMed helicopter in Arkansas and heard about it from some friends that work there. We've been wanting to branch out with our fly fishing and thought this would be a good place to start.

John

[Al Agnew]

As a dedicated smallmouth chaser but only a casual smallmouth flyfisher, here are some random thoughts on flyfishing for smallies...

First mistake most flyfishers make if they are used to flyfishing for trout is that they use flies that are too small. While smallmouths will take small stuff, if you want to catch more bigger fish, usually something bigger will work better.

Second mistake...dead-drifting usually won't work as well as giving the fly some action, no matter what kind of fly you're using.

Third mistake..."matching the hatch" has considerably less validity with smallmouths than with trout. Smallies react to movement first, size second, depth third, color fourth. It doesn't have to look much like a crawdad if it moves a bit like a crawdad, and it doesn't even have to move like a crawdad if it's of a size that the fish can swallow.

Fourth mistake...concentrating too much on the bottom in deeper water. If the water temp is above 60 degrees and the fish are active, they'll usually be looking up. You can waste a lot of time fishing slow and deep in places where there AREN'T active fish. Active fish will be where the food is, and the food is mostly in or very near shallow water with some current. On a creek like the Little Piney, 18 inches is not too shallow as long as there is some cover for the fish to go to for security, and 6 feet is often too deep. Keep in mind I'm talking about warm water periods...late autumn and winter is a whole different story.

So...a selection of smallmouth flies should include a lot of unweighted or slightly weighted streamers. Big woolybuggers are always good. I really like marabou muddlers, fished unweighted. Various poppers, deer hair, balsa, or foam, will work. Hook sizes don't matter except to make sure you have enough hook gap for the material around the hook, but the average smallmouth fly should be at least 2.5 inches long, and can be up to 5 inches long.

I've been experimenting with smallie flies, and today I came up with a prototype that I think I'm going to be very happy with. It consists of a piece of chamois cloth (white) cut into the shape of a curly tail grub, coming off the rear of the hook shank, then some chartreuse bucktail tied so that it sweeps backward about halfway back along the chamois, then a grizzly cross-cut rabbit strip wound around the front part of the hook. In the water, the whole thing is about 4 inches long with the tail straightened and waving, and about an inch wide in the body. It will sink VERY slowly (tied with no weight), and I plan on fishing it with long, medium speed strips so that it moves steadily for about 2-3 feet with tail waving, then stops and just starts to sink, then strip again and repeat. It will run just under the surface so that it actually makes a wake on the surface. Why do I think it will work? Because it looks just like my favorite handmade spinnerbait, only without the spinners, when it's in the water...and I KNOW that works! Maybe this will give you some indication of what kind of smallie flies to look for.

Again, this is all just my opinion, and there are plenty of smallmouth fly fishermen who are more experienced at it than I am. I'm just always looking for ways to adapt the things that I KNOW work in non-flyfishing to flyfishing applications.

[BrianK]

Any report yet?

I love the little Piney too buthave mainly fished the upper reaches for rainbows. Have fished the lower river only a few times for smallies and sorry no better advice than already given above. A very nice thing is that you almost always have the stream to yourself!

If you haven't gone yet and the smallies are less than cooperative, you do have some nice trout water very close by for Plan B (just in case). Lots of good info on this site or the MDC website. good luck.

[Kansas Fly Fisher]

Thanks for the info guys. Work has not be cooperating with us and we haven't been able to make it down yet. It's still on the hit list, just been slowed down a bit. I'll post a report when we get down there.

Thanks again,

John