8-13-2022 Wow Smallmouth, Thanks!

 Man, what a day! Stream smallmouth populations wax and wane. Various factors, floods, poor recruitment, fish kills, habitat loss, predation by otters, eagles, and man. I've been following one vein of gold in a certain area of the state for a few years as old stand bys wane. The 18" size class has been piling up this year, but it had been nearly a year since I landed a 20" smallmouth bass. That changed Saturday as in the last month, I've been in a complete different area I've neglected for half a decade.

I set out around 930, water was cooler than I expected and slightly up from normal flow for late summer. Last week had seen a three inch rain dump, but there had been plenty of time to clear. Flats filled with bait fish were now available to hungry summer smallmouth, who frankly have been facing super high water temps this summer. Water flowed steadily through each boulder strewn riffle. Key here was not fast. I found fish at each choke point with shade, flats created by riffles.

Early caught 3 12-14"ers on a worm right in the 'faster' stuff. This showed my the beginning of the pattern that would hold all day. At one bend in the river, I hooked and tried to bulldog one huge fish, who head shook and came free. Long enough to see he was huge for what I expected. Thick and in the 19"+ range. Bummer. But I had 5 miles to go on foot and the rocky creek would be very challenging wade. 

More fish on the worm. I got confident in it to my detriment a few minutes later at the perfect push water lined with water willows and strewn with boulders. Tossing the 'weedless' worm, I hung up on a root and awkwardly balanced on softball sized rocks as I switched to my second topwater rod with a Sammy clipped on. When the lure hit the water, it was immediately annihlated. I knew it was really big. The fight was unreal, soon I was tripping on my other rod that still had the line out forward. I let it drop in the river as fear of losing the large bass gripped me. for a moment I allowed slack, this allowed the fish to get an enormous amount of steam and head for the fast riffle. As I tried to bulldog it to shore near me, the hooks pulled free. Enough to see a brilliant bass in the 20-21" range. What was going on? This river doesn't produce 2 chances like that in my experience.

So imagine self criticism, for about 5 minutes when the plunge pool became a wide, shallow, shaded flat below a riffle. Another giant blow up and lengthy fight brought this 19"er to hand:

After that, I had the mojo working, Sammy worm, worm Sammy. Stacked up and front and rear of every riffle. I was losing or missing a lot of fish on the Sammy. I would later surmise the bass were doing a lot of head shaking and the pressure + drag equation was pulling a lot of hooks loose. I didn't figure this out for 7 hours.

A shaded plunge pool produced a massive whiff, to which I saw a large fish circle to the push area behind a boulder as the pool funneled into another riffle. I switched to worm and pulled 2 fish. on the third try the large fish had circulated back and grabbed my worm. It was on. Determined not to make the same mistakes as she headed down stream, I gave slack line when she jumped, as the worm was not heavy enough to throw. This worked well. I soon had this beautiful 20"er to hand:

Seriously, I'm glad I looked elsewhere to fish, because this was exactly what I needed to break my 20"slump. Incredible action so far. I was catching fish everywhere by now, very few under 12". As I moved up to a laydown push water area, Sammy was quickly destroyed by another huge fish, a short struggle and she popped off right in a bunch of boulders and I scrambled to scoop her up. It must have been quite the sight! Incredibly, another 20" smallmouth bass. It was bizarre. I've caught a couple 20's on 5 or 6 occasions, but never have I hooked into at least 3 and maybe 4. There just aren't that many chances at that size class of fish in these streams. 

It kept up. At another laydown push water, Sammy was destroyed. Before I could pull the fish away, he had already swum a loop around the log and logged my Sammy in it. Took a break and nabbed a couple 17"'s.

There weren't any more huge fish opportunities, but I did hit 15-17" fish often the rest of the day. After 5, I hit my mid point bridge and had to rush a bit. Followed by a white dog, which happens once a year. I finally remembered to keep my rod tip down to prevent jump that were shaking loose a lot of Sammy fish. I loosed my drag a bit. 40, 50,60, 70, 80....Army cramping from fighting fish and working that Sammy.

89 smallmouth bass 5 other fish 2-20", 1-19", 4-17", 3-16", 9-15" in 10 hours 5 miles and a 3 mile bike shuttle which was sweet, sweet sweet after all that.