Archive for the ‘Smallmouth Bass’ Category

Well, summer with Colin was going great until I got a crazy insane flu or cold virus. I seldom get sick, but when I do, it’s a doozy.  This time was no exception, and for the first time in about a decade, I was laid up for about two weeks.  By the time I had regained my energy, the heat and humidity took hold, with temperatures heading up above 45C with the humidex taken into consideration.

A couple of nights, the temperature didn’t even drop below 35C.  At night! As much as I love fishing, that’s just too hot to do anything.

We did manage a couple of short trips – one of which saw me skunked for the first time this year, not counting when I competed in the Fly Fishing Championships.

One evening, Colin and I decided to try a different section of the Grand River, above Lake Bellwood.  I drove along a bunch of gravel roads, and I am not even sure I could get back to the place if I tried.  There was a well worn path down the bank of the river, and later we discovered that a half hour walk downstream would have gotten us to a stretch of the river where some nice smallmouth bass hang out.   We didn’t walk too far, but in the hour and half of fishing that we did, I caught a bunch of baby smallmouth bass on the Quinchat’s Glimmer as well as Hare’s Ear Nymphs.

Another evening, we had time to spend about 45 minutes before it got dark below Shand Damn.  There were small fish rising, and I had about 20 fish rise to my “Tap Dance Caddis” but no hook ups at all.  A frustrating 45 minutes indeed! Colin had one fish on, using The Grand River Fly, but lost it before he could bring it to hand.

Milder weather has finally moved in, so I’ll likely be doing some fishing again this week. And just in time for that, my new William Joseph “Coastal” Chest Pack arrived in the mail today.  I am totally impressed with the products William Joseph produces!  As some readers will know, I reviewed the William Joseph waders here.  After I spend some time with this chest pack, I’ll write a review of this product – initial inspection says… “Impressive!!”

I also picked up the “hydration bladder” which fits nicely into the back of the chest pack – and holds 3 litres of water. I like to have lots of water with me when I’m fishing, but bottled water is awkward no matter what one is wearing.  This water bladder is going to be awesome.

More soon!

Mik of Tamanawis (from Edinburgh, Scotland) has an interesting post entitled “Nymphing smymphing” about some nymphing techniques and resources he has found useful. There are a couple of great pictures of nymphs, too. No boys – not the nymphs you’re looking for in the pub on Friday night – but the ones that satisfy the fish we try to catch.

I’ve never used a strike indicator. Perhaps I’ve missed fish because of that. It’s been my experience that most of my nymphing success comes during some stripping of the line, either on a retrieve, or when just attempting to give the nymph some movement in the water. Although I haven’t kept many records (something I intend on doing), I’ve found soft hackled nymphs, unweighted, more effective in faster water and simply drifted, while heavier nymphs with weighted beadheads work best in deeper pools and while stripping line.

But then, this could just be my technique (or lack of technique!). But regardless, I’ve caught good fish with the above in mind. I’ve also found that smallmouth bass seem to love to hit a nymph on the retrieve. Ahhh.. smallmouth bass – something our Scottish friends really need to experience some day!

Back to nymphing – here is a primer on Czech Style nymphing.

First, I think Ian James is onto something.

Second, had a great evening on the Grand River near Fergus this evening. This was a portion of the river I had never fished before, so it took me a few minutes of reconnasaince to figure out where I wanted to place myself in the river. There were a few folks fishing upstream of where I had entered, and one fellow about 150 yards downstream. I decided to fish some nice riffle water, with some deeper pools through it, along with some still water within casting distance across.

It was a beautiful evening, part cloud, part sun and mild temperatures – but interestingly, there were no hatches of anything going on to speak of. I think the whole evening I saw a total of ten fish rising – so I decided to tie on a wet fly pattern. Now, once again, because of the upcoming Canadian Fly Fishing Championships, upon agreement with my teammates, I’m not at liberty to say what patterns I used until after the competition has been completed. But I must have been lucky in my hunch this evening, as I stuck with one pattern just about the entire time, and was quite successful.

In fact, I caught my first fish on the fourth cast. A nice 12 incher. I lost a few more, caught a few more – and ended up bringing about a dozen browns to hand on the one fly – the largest being about 16 inches, and the smallest, 10 inches.

I also had one monster on that broke my 4 lb. test leader. This guy was BIG. My TCO rod was bent right over, and line was slipping through my fingers as I fought it. Then all of a sudden, Snap! Sheesh.

No idea what the fish was – it could have been a big brown, but I was told there are also some carp in that area – but with the particular pattern I was fishing, I doubt it was a carp. It could have been a big bass though as later on, I did hook a smallmouth but lost it. As I was bringing it in, it did a nice little tail dance for me on top of the water, and it was a green smallie, no doubt, about 14 inches or so. After the tail dance, it dove to the bottom and shook the fly.

I decided to wade a little further downstream and have a chat with the angler who was fishing a pool about 75 yards away. Turns out his name is Josh Rienhardt, visiting Ontario from West Texas. A fine fly angler he is too. I had some time to admire his casting skills before chatting with him. Josh shared some of his experiences over the past few days with me, and I shared some stuff, under the threat of disembowlment if he let out what I was using to anyone who might be competing in the championships this weekend. It was nice to meet him, and talk about fly fishing in general, and our own favorite waters specifically. Hope to see you again on the river sometime, Josh!
Just before dark, I decided to switch flies, just to experiment and test something out, and sure enough, two more nice browns, both about 12 inches were caught and released. I wanted to fish longer, but by this time, the sun had completely gone down below the horizon and I was in darkness. As I waded back to the path along the side of the river, a favorite sight of mine – fireflies! I love seeing fireflies at night, and there were hundreds of them, flashing their little bums green.

Did you know that fireflies flash their bums with that little light because they are looking to attract a mate? I sometimes wonder what it would be like if humans, when they were ummm… aroused, had their bums flash…

Might make things easier at the singles bars, huh? Well, I’d prefer to be fly fishing myself than hangin’ out at the singles’s bars anyhow. And now, I’m going to tie up some more flies and hopefully convince some of my team members to give them a try during the competition. I think they might be surprised!