Smallmouth University: Dear Professor

[mic]

Rule #1. There are no rules.

F.W. you are talking to a guy who last year was parking in the eddies and fishing the fast water. Complete newbe to moving water.

[mic]

Its called a "run".

The in-fisherman has an entire book about streams.

They said the Ozarks have the most pure form of "hole, riffle, run" system in the world.

Thanks, but I was referring to the space at the end of the hole where it shallows and channels into the riffle (I understand the run). I'm trying to figure out if I should fish the area where the hole goes from deep to shallow or the shallow water before the riffle. I guess from above... both.

[Greasy B]

Tail outs are an iffy proposition if the stream your fishing is seeing much boat traffic, especialy power boats. Your best bet is a warm summer evening on a secluded river with a little color to the water. Madam X works great if you can find the other parts to the puzzle.

Dude, if it was mid June right now we could find it this weekend.

[Guest]

Thanks, but I was referring to the space at the end of the hole where it shallows and channels into the riffle (I understand the run). I'm trying to figure out if I should fish the area where the hole goes from deep to shallow or the shallow water before the riffle. I guess from above... both.

both areas are considered runs, and I let the fish tell me if I should fish both of them. Sometimes they're in one of the ones and not the other.

Sometimes, theyre in both runs (tail and head of the pool)

Theres a particular run that always holds fish.

Its below a pool and riffle then a 200 yard stretch of run before hitting the next riffle and pool. This extended run area has a deeper area thats 30 yards long and waist deep. The current has a "bubble trail" that follows the deepest part of the run. this bubble trail always has smallmouth nearby, hiding behind rocks that are slightly bigger than themselves. It ALWAYS holds fish all summer long. Every year, no matter how much floods change the channel.

They're ALWAYS there, so I spend a lot of time fine tuning my approach to the pet fish.

[fishinwrench]

F.W. you are talking to a guy who last year was parking in the eddies and fishing the fast water. Complete newbe to moving water.

The bottom 10" of water in a 3' deep fast riffle can be a killer holding area. One such spot on the lower Niangua holds smallies consistently. Stand at the top and hold a #2 Flash-dancer in the current, twitching it occasionally ....and they'll dart up off the bottom and cream it.

[Jerry Rapp]

a wise old man once told me, while we were eating bologna, tomatoe, and onion sandwiches out around KK island on Truman, that the fish are either looking up or down. If they ain't hitting topwater, then they aren't looking up, they are looking down. Made sense to me and can be applied to any species. Thanks to Joe Williamson for this insight.

[Al Agnew]

1. Buggers wouldn't be the best for float-n-fly techiques, unless weighted differently from the normal bugger. For the float-n-fly, you need a jig with line tie on top of the head, so that the "fly" hangs horizontally in the water. You CAN weight a bugger so it does that to some extent (weighted with lead wire around the middle of the hook shank), but the normal bugger isn't like that. Buggers are all-purpose flies that are good stripped or dead drifted and loosely imitate lots of bottom organisms or minnows.

2. I call them rootwads. As others have said, the fish can be anywhere in them. But as a general rule, in cooler water, especially water less than 60 degrees, the fish are more likely to be in the dead water just downstream of the rootwad. In warmer water, active fish will be in the push water above the rootwad. From downstream, make your first cast into the slack water corner on the downstream side. Make your next cast up ahead of the rootwad so that it comes downstream along the outside edge. But of course, if the rootwad is gnarly and has all kinds of brushy stuff sticking out, your second cast will probably get hung up, which is why you make your first cast to that downstream corner where there is less likely to be stuff to get hung up in; you at least get in one good cast! From upstream, the ideal position is not straight upstream but just a little away from the rootwad, so that you can make a cast that drifts down into the pocket in front of the rootwad, then swings across the front of it to the outside.

3. Okay, let's get the terminology straight...a "tailout" is, as Mic thought, the area right at the top of a riffle, where the pool above shallows but before it drops over the upper lip of the riffle. Not all tailouts are good, and not all rivers have a lot of good tailouts. The Meramec, for instance, has few good tailouts because there isn't enough of a difference between the tailout and the riffle. Most spots like that on the Meramec just gradually shallow and speed up into riffle proper, and in such situations, you need some kind of cover that will break that gradually speeding current. The best tailouts are where the pool ABRUPTLY drops over the lip of the riffle. And they can be pure magic, although most of the time most of the fish in them will be small to medium size. Best way to fish them is from upstream with a surface lure, because if the fish are in the tailouts, they're active and shallow and will ALWAYS take a surface lure. And like Mitch said, they'll come a long way to get it. And don't worry about how shallow it is. As long as it's deep enough to cover a bass's back, the bass could be there. Only other thing to remember is, because the fish are so shallow, they are usually pretty spooky, so you have to make long casts.

Other good spots related to tailouts, that a lot of people don't fish, are the off-banks at the bottom of big pools. Say you've got a big, rocky pool. You've fished your way down the rocky bank all the way to the bottom. Most people just go on and drift through the riffle to the next pool. But always look over on the other side, and if there is a log over there where the current begins to speed up, FISH IT. Big largemouths love that spot, and sometimes a big smallmouth will be there, too.

5. I never use synthetics. Nuff said.

[Chief Grey Bear]

5. I never use synthetics. Nuff said.

Yes you do.

[mic]

Thanks Al... that makes perfect sense to me. Sounds like you have some explaining to do with Chief.

[stlfisher]

As a newbie to fly fishing for smallies last year I can only add a couple things I experienced.

1) If wading you gotta move slow and make long casts...smallmouth are pretty spooky on the small shallow streams.

2) i agree that bigger flies or bigger buggers are probably better. I did not have much luck with the smaller size.

3) I had most of my success throwing poppers of some sort on the shallow creeks. As long as the fish didn't see me I caught them and they would often hit the top water stuff aggresively. If they new I was around forget about it...

4) Fly fishing for smallmouth is a ton of fun...and they way I like to fish them...but your catch rate will decrease significantly from using convential tackle.