Smallie questions

[WestCentralFisher]

I caught the best smallie of the day yesterday 6 feet in front of my boots right by a bridge where any fisherman who drove past the creek would cast first. I also spooked an even bigger one from like 40 feet away in more secluded and presumably less pressured water. It swam off like it was being actively chased by a shark. 

No one wants to admit that there is a high degree of only loosely explainable randomness in this stuff, but there just is. Maybe the hole where the second smallie was has a heron or snapping turtle that frequents it, so it's extra cautious. You can't really know these things unless it's a creek you fish a ton. And even then it can be fuzzy. 

[Fly guy]

20 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

How many times have you fished the eddy line or the drop off at the bottom of a riffle for trout from no more than 10 or 20 feet away?  In clear water, that simply doesn't work with smallmouth.  In clear wading streams, often you need to be making 20-30 yard casts.  If wading upstream, you need to be casting into the pool above from within the riffle, not waiting until you get into the pool. 

Your right Al, fly fishing casts on smaller waters aren't near as far.  Generally a 9-12 foot leader plus 5-30 feet of fly line depending on casting room and other factors. I don't generally cast from in the water though.  Especially on Missouri's wild streams, I treat them like small NE brookie creeks. I am usually casting from my knees or behind any brushy cover.  That has been my approach to smallmouth so far, to stay out of the water unless moving across a riffle to the next piece of dry ground. I will definitely try your approach casting from the riffles a bit farther back. 

[Lloyd]

Can you catch live crayfish at your creek? As WestCentral said, if you can see the fish, they can see you, but as long as they're not spooked it's rare that they won't slurp a well presented craw.

[Fly guy]

24 minutes ago, Lloyd said:

Can you catch live crayfish at your creek? As WestCentral said, if you can see the fish, they can see you, but as long as they're not spooked it's rare that they won't slurp a well presented craw.

I honestly haven't tried live bait.  I don't know why but I don't use bait, I've always preferred artificials. I have caught crayfish just for fun but I always let them go.  

[Lloyd]

Yeah, I strongly prefer artificials as well, but in those situations where there are big bass in front of me and they aren't eating my lures (maybe because they're inactive, or because they see me, or because my lures look ridiculous and nothing like the prey they supposedly represent), I will resort to live craws or minnows if they're available. And they almost always get it done.

IMO the big downsides to live bait are: 1) getting it is often a challenge, 2) keeping it frisky on your hook is another challenge, 3) you can't cover much water with it, and 4) it's a pretty boring way to fish.  

[ColdWaterFshr]

Fly-fishing for smallmouth is fun and a bit more challenging, but I think the only carry-over from trout fishing would be as it relates to targeting larger BROWN trout large streamer-fishing tactics.  Or large poppers on top.  Much different than nymphing tactics for smaller fish and rainbow feeding habits.  Not to say that large browns don't eat small stuff, they certainly do.   But smallmouth are ambush predators, and usually won't waste their energy on # 14 crackleback.   

I'll reach for the fly rod for smallmouth if the creek or the river and conditions are right.  But to do that, I'm out of the canoe, and I like it for the right type of water.  Most of the time though, at least the way I fish for smallmouth, I'm pounding the banks with long casts on the baitcaster and moving as I cover water.  And mostly large, fast-moving topwater baits.  You just cant do that with a fly-rod.  I can't anyway.

Tim Holschlag book on fly-fishing for smallmouth is a good book with a lot of useful information if you are dedicated to using only that tool.

[tjm]

I have zero knowledge of brown trout, have only caught a handful of stocker browns in my 50 years of fishing. 

Any SMB knowledge that I may have would be limited to the streams I've  fished, so perhaps not applicable everywhere, but I find using a fly rod with no cranking and relatively little casting (the same 20' of line can be swung and  recast until a fish is on, even while moving up or down the stream) much easier than fighting with casting gear and lures and constant cranking. I certainly don't cover as much water as is possible with long casts and much cranking, but then I have no desire to cover water for the sake of covering water and prefer to target specific holding spots or fish. Streams I'm most familiar with are fairly small ~100-500 CFS, with the flow being relatively fast,  so in larger or slower waters things may be altogether different, but...  With a fly rod you can stand waist deep in a clear fast stream,  15'-25' from the tongue of water pouring into a "hole" and smack that big fly into the far side of that tongue, rip it back across the current and recast it to the far side again a foot or two farther downstream and repeat with nary a crank on the reel, often enough to please me, the bass will take on one of the first three casts, and fairly often two or three bass will be in that same input tongue. You can also make 10' casts into and under sunken logs. Where I stand determines how much line control I'll have and how the fly will present to the fish; I like the farthest extension of the cast or  swing  to fall just a bit short of the fish, bass will move to it.

But we have  also fished clear fast streams with trout sized nymphs or streamers and in pretty much the same manner as fishing for trout, we've taken numbers of smaller bass. One morning, about 35 years ago, when the moon and sun and the tilt of the earth all synced just so, the kid said that we took 53 fish over a half mile of creek using trout flies, I didn't count or measure them but the vast majority were 10-12" bass along with a handful of sunfish and  4-5 crappie. never had a repeat of that and when I've targeted larger bass (15'+) with salt sized flies,  that same stretch has never produced more  than 3-4. Long stretches (100-400yards)  of these streams seem to hold no bass at all or only smaller specimens. I look for changes of depth, sunken logs or other features that provide shade or changes to the flow, inflow and outflow of pools/holes, those broken slabs of limestone, but also note any "springs" or cool spots while wading wet as those cool spots can attract fish sometimes. 

When I fished in southern New England, the stream bass were all <3# largemouth and they commonly sought  out the old mill ponds, rather than the brooks and were caught by casting trout streamers  close to myself and into or parallel to the heavy chokeweed or lillypad growth, places that spin/casting lures wouldn't fish but a short stout fly leader would. This up close weed bed fly fishing also produced numerous chain pickerel up to ~24". I don't recall ever taking LMB from open flowing water in those years. It was this LMB experience using trout streamers that caused me to initially use trout flies in the Ozark creeks for bass, and the lack of lillypads had me working all kinds of water,  but as time went by, I switched to larger and fewer styles of flies in fewer pieces of water and somehow to catching larger bass. 

My take on fishing bass with fly vs trout with fly is bass want more noise, need bigger hooks and shorter leaders, and while I often fish trout from the banks, I most often get right in there with the bass. ymmv

[rps]

Always listen to Al Agnew!

Others may disagree with me, but the best way to learn to fish smallmouth with fly would be to learn to catch them on spin or baitcast. Once you learn where and how to fish them, you can apply that learning to fly fishing tactics.

Bass respond to two instincts, hunger and strike response. To cater to both, certain lures excel in stream/river fishing. Poppers, walk the dog, or buzzers (Whopper Ploppers, Heddon Torpedos, or small buzz baits) would be on my list. Spinner baits like the mepps or rooster tail, or small twin spin would  work for both. A small jig head with a hellgrammite (https://tackle-max.com/collections/hellgrammites) falls in the hungry category. A Rebel craw hard bait as well.

I would use a light bait caster rig with 6 or 8# line because I hate spinning rigs, but I know good fishermen that use spinning gear.

Go find the slow current with logs and lay downs, the river channel changes that create seams, the shoals that back up pools, create moving water, and end in eddies. (10% of the water holds 90% of the fish) When you find success doing that and have confidence in your eye, go to the fly rod if you wish.

Once you catch a 15 to 20 inch smallmouth, you will never fish rainbows again. I respect big browns, but I wish smallmouth grew to 40 pounds.

[tjm]

I'd say the best way to learn to catch any fish on fly is to leave all the other gear at home, but then I'm lazy and easily bored with all that cranking. Live bait isn't so boring as lures, but it can be smelly on a hot day if left in the car. Live crawdads on a fly rod with automatic reel is pretty efficient.  

[Quillback]

My dad and his buddy Vince fished the streams around here.  They would almost always used a black Zoom Trick Worm on a slider head.  I fished with my dad once on Big Sugar when I was down here for Thanksgiving maybe close to 30 years ago.  We fished Trick worms that day and did fairly well as I remember.  We fished upstream, wet wading, to me, coming down from Washington, it was a little chilly, but I think my poor dad about froze to death.

We'd throw that worm into likely cover, behind a stump, log or rock, and usually they'd hit it right away.  If no bite, swim it back with the current and every once in a while, one would grab it when it was swimming.

Another plastic the folks that fish the local streams use is a Zoom Tiny Brush Hog.  The smaller Zoom Lizards are popular too.

When I was stationed in Maryland, I fished the Potomac near Harpers Ferry.  The river there is about a mile wide, but lots of rocky shallows with lots of place to wade.  I always used Rooster Tails there.  You could catch 30-50 smallies on a good day, but you'd be lucky to have one that went over 14 inches.

I need to find some wading spots around here and do a little more stream fishing.  It's fun catching those smallies in current.