Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Flyfishing for Smallmouth

The past few weeks have been very busy for me, so I haven't had time to do anything fun outside. After tearing apart the engine of a lawnmower and ordering parts yesterday, I decided I would go fishing for a few hours on the Shenandoah River. The river is pretty low right now, so wading and fly fishing is my favorite way to try and catch Smallmouth Bass.
I was using my Cortland 5 weight fly rod, a 6 foot long tapered leader, and about 3 feet of 3 pound tippet. My go to flies and lures on this river is anything that is white and has a nice flash to it. I use white rooster tails when spin fishing. The closest thing I had yesterday was size 6 White Woolly Buggers with some Crystal Flash material wound around the body of the streamer.
I fished for about two hours and caught ten smallies, all on White Woolly Buggers. Most of them were around a pound but they put up a great fight! The biggest one I hooked was holding in some riffles that stretched all the way across the river. He struck at my fly 3 times before I finally hooked him. Unfortunately, he broke the tippet and the best glimpse I got of the fish was when he jumped out of the water and threw the fly from his mouth about 25 yards downstream. I would judge the fish to be about 2 pounds. I wish I had gotten a chance to actually fight the fish!
I am hoping that I will be able to get back out on the river at some point this weekend. I may take my kayak out and try fishing some of the deeper stretches of the river.

5 comments:

  1. Sounds like fun. Let me know when you want to do that float trip.

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  2. Gotta' love those Smallies! They are some tough, broad shouldered fish. Keep us posted on your next trip.

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  3. It's good to see you made it back into the outdoors! I keep wanting to do more fishing with woolly buggers, but I always turn to something else instead. What kind of action do you give your woollies when you bring them in?

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  4. Paul- I lower my rod tip and pull the line every few seconds to draw the woollies in. I typically cast slightly upstream and then work the fly until it is directly downstream of me. Sometimes a small shake of the rod tip is enough to draw a strike also.

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  5. Sounds like a great time. We go after smallies in our local rivers quite often as well, but I usually go after them with a spincast reel armed with either a Mepps #3 or a beetle sping. I've never thought about going after them with a flyrod. I might have to give that a try.

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