Central Iowa Smallmouth Bass Flyfishing 7-30-2016

I flyfished a nearby small river on Saturday from 10:30am-3:30pm.  Water level is low...Gauge Height of 2.65' and Flow Rate of only 22 cfs.  Made for nice, easy wading!

I already had a chartruese microjig on the line, so started with that and caught a Creek Chub, several Largemouth Bass, Bluegills, Green Sunfish, and smaller Smallmouth Bass.

I had tied up one yellow Blockhead Popper the previous evening, specifically for this trip, although I had others with me as well.  My plan was to use the Popper as much as possible to hopefully select for larger bass.  I switched to standard and marabou Clouser Deep Minnows a couple times, but stuck with the popper most of the time.  It paid off!

I had fished my way 1/2 back to the car, and had only caught smaller fish...no bass over 12".  Then I caught a 13-incher, and thought THAT might be the biggest fish of the day.

I found a "honey hole", and caught 3 NICE Smallies out of it and some others as well.  The 3 biggest were 16.5", 18.5", and 16" (caught in that order).  All on the Blockhead Popper.

16.5"

18.5" (new Fly Rod Personal Best for me!):

Smallmouth Bass

Smallmouth Bass

16":

And here's some others I didn't measure, but were nice, colorful fish:

Smallmouth Bass

Just downstream of the "honey hole", another LARGE Smallmouth attacked my popper, and my line broke on the hookset.  I felt bad...it jumped twice over the next 10 minutes trying to throw the fly.  NICE fish.  All in all.... a very fun day!

Wading for Smallmouth Bass in Central Iowa, 6-25-2016

The water level and flows of a nearby Smallmouth Bass stream looked good.  A couple guys I know kayaked the stream t he previous weekend.  With rain in the forecast, I figured the sooner I could get there, the better.  So, Saturday morning I waded into the stream @ 8am and fished until 1pm.  As expected the river was about perfect for wading.  There's a couple hard-to-pass deeper areas, and I just barely had to dunk my jewels there.  The water never reached my belt.

Saw a lot of these Ebony Jewelwing damselflies.

I landed @ 30 Smallies.  Only about 5 were decent fish 10"+, but really nothing very big.  Most were like this:

I did have two better Smallies on that fought like crazy.  One I saw, one I didn't.  Probably both would have been the biggest fish of the day.  Caught most of the fish on modified Pearl Shiners.  One was modified thus: tied on a #4 Mustad 90-degree jighead hook, with a lead or brass conehead for weight.  This kept the fly riding hook-point-up and relatively snag-free.

I also caught 3 Creek Chubs and 3 Striped Shiners.  One of the shiners was VERY big for a shiner, but I wasn't able to photograph it before it set itself free.

Flyfished for Smallmouth Bass on 7-11-2015

I wanted to fish on Saturday.  Rainstorms in the morning kept me home, agonizing on where I should go.  There was a big festival going on in town which is a lot of fun, but for fishing I prefer solitude if I can find it.  So, I didn't want to fish in town.  By 11:30, the radar showed the rain and clouds were clearing out.  After checking some river levels online, I made my choice to go flyfishing for Smallmouth Bass at a small river about a 45 minute drive from home.

42 Smallmouth Bass, 2 Largemouth Bass, 3 Creek Chubs and 1 Green Sunfish proved it was a great choice!

This was my first visit to this river this year, and I was pleased to find it perfectly wadable, and water clarity good.  And whats even better is I didn't see another person the whole day.  Not even any kayaks or canoers, which I do sometimes see there.

At this particular spot, I walk upstream along a dirt trail through the woods, get in the river, and back back downstream towards my car.  The understory was fairly lush, and that's my excuse for missing my usual point-of-entry into the water.  I walked down one trail to the water, and caught a couple small Smallmouth Bass right away on a beadhead gold Woolly Bugger.

I retraced the trail back to the main path and continued upstream.  I ended up at a feeder creek.  I got in the water there, and waded it back down to the stream.  Along the way, I picked up a couple Creek Chubs on the Woolly Bugger.  I'd been wanting to catch some Creek Chubs on my fly rod, but hadn't actually seen any in years.  I later caught another one in the main river, so I ended up with 3 for the day.

I made my way to the main river channel and soon had a decent Smallmouth Bass on next to a log in the water.  I watched another nice Smallmouth and a smaller one chase the hooked fish around the area...I suppose trying to steal whatever it had eaten?

I tried a blockhead popper, as that has worked well for me on this river in the past.  But I think the topwater bite gets better later on in the Summer.  The fish weren't interested.  I switched to an FC Pearl Shiner and caught a number of Smallmouth bass off that log, as well as a small Largemouth Bass.  Most were small, but this one might have been the other good one I had seen:

I waded on downstream, picking up a fish or two here an there, mostly smaller fish.  I did see a few carp, which doesn't always happen.  I didn't fish for them, but they would have been a lot of fun.

I saw a wild Turkey spook from its roost near the top of a tall Oak Tree next the the high-banked river.  Its flight was quite loud as it flew across the stream and disappeared somewhere downstream.

I also caught this damselfly that repeatedly landed on my fly rod as I was fishing.

Anyway, I fished for about 5.5 hours, and waded 0.75 miles of river.  I noticed in the afternoon, the Smallies preferred shaded areas.  Here's some more fish from the trip:

I'm pretty sure I've never caught that many smallmouth bass in one trip to this river before.  It was a VERY enjoyable day!

Quick Smallmouth Bass Trip, 9-4-2014

I decided to try flyfishing for Smallmouth Bass after dinner.  By the time I drove north to the river, it was @ 6:20pm before I finally waded out into the stream.  The river was only slightly higher than my previous trip earlier this year, but seemed a bit dirtier as well, from a recent rain.  Overall, conditions were decent, though.

I knew there wasn't much time to fish.  I fished the same section I hit before, but this time I finished it in about 1.33 hours, compared to @ 4 hours when I was here a month ago.  Run-and-Gun wading!

I didn't work any area thoroughly, just hit good spots briefly, and quickly plowed through the barren stretches.

I started out with a yellow Blockhead Popper, and caught one Smallmouth Bass on it, plus missed a second, and had a 3rd shake free after a few seconds.  I switched to a large-ish chartreuse Cactus Chenille Bugger with lead eyes, and caught three Smallmouth Bass and one Hybrid Sunfish.  I was looking forward to fishing some large boulders in the last section of stream before finishing, but there was another angler there...so I just cut up the bank and walked back to my car and left.  I did stop and ask how he'd done, and he'd caught a half dozen Smallies with spinning gear, and lost a very nice one right at his feet.  He was there when I arrived...I don't know how long he'd been fishing, but he was working that last section pretty slow and methodically.

Anyway, no big fish for me, just 2 "medium-sized" bass in the 11"-13" range, and a couple smaller ones.

Flyfishing for Smallmouth Bass, 7-27-2014

My better half told me I could go fishing...so I HAD to go.  I WANTED to go.  Unfortunately, it was REALLY WINDY.  That severely limited my choices.  I could try to flyfish some local ponds by putting the wind at my back and fishing the calmer water on the upwind side.  But, I've been flyfishing topwaters for Largemouth Bass at the local ponds quite a bit lately, and the local reservoir and river still have high waters.

My better choices were limited.  I considered a small river for Smallmouth Bass.  This river had effectively dried up each of the past two dry summers.  There were only shallow intermittent pools left, and these may have largely frozen during the winters.  This definitely hurt the entire river's ecosystem.  Water had been high in this river early this year, and I wasn't certain it would even be wadable yet.

So, those were questions that needed answers...Would the trees adequately block the wind?  Was it wadable?  Were there any decent fish worth catching?

I went.  The stream section I intended to fish was busy with people...canoers/kayers/anglers/folks walking around.  Its a small stream, a guy can pretty easily cast a fly to each bank from the middle of the river in most areas.  Anyway, I quickly checked Google Earth for alternative access locations, and picked one nearby.  I walked upstream on shore, then waded back down and flyfished a 1/2 mile stretch of river back to my car.

Mosquitos swarmed me as soon as I got out of my SUV and started gearing up.  They badgered me the entire walk up the narrow dirt path through the woods as I headed upstream.  They left me alone, thankfully, as soon as I got in the water and started wading.

Smallies often like yellow or chartreuse, so I first tied on a chartreuse mylar bugger (basically a Woolly Bugger with no hackle) with beadchain eyes.  It didn't take long...a half-dozen casts in, I watched a wake bulge its way towards the fly.  Fish on!

Decent little Smallmouth Bass of @ 11" to start the day!
I saw a sucker (the only one I saw all day, as it turned out) on the far side of a section of fast water, and made some casts that tumbled right by the fish, but the sucker was uninterested in it.

Now that I had seen the water depth/clarity, I felt reasonably confident a topwater might get some attention.  I tied one to my line.
The first strike on the topwater was a dinky, but aggressive, Smallie:

I fished an interesting short rocky rapid with an especially large submerged boulder on the downstream side that was sitting in a small calm pocket, but surrounded on 2 sides by faster water.  That looked GOOD!  I landed 3 fish from that rock, and lost one more that was probably the biggest one.

That popper continued to work well for me.  Here's 3 pics of one fish that was one of the better ones for the day (it was too tough to decide which was my favorite picture of it):

I came to a spot that looked really good, but it had just gotten worked over by a guy fishing with spinning gear.  The current was too fast and deep for the popper to be effective, so I switched to a crayfish pattern under a strike indicator, a technique that Tim Holschlag finds to be extremely successful for Smallies.

It worked, I caught one!

As I moved past that spot, I continued in the wake of the spin-fisherman.  I switched to a yellow blockhead-style popper.  This worked well too! (I think the first two are pictures of one fish):

The fish really seemed to like that popper, but it broke off on a fish and I lost it.  I saw it float away, so the fish is still OK.

I switched back to the pre-formed foam-head style popper that I was using earlier (the green one).  The final stretch of river didn't look as good as some others I had fished upstream...but there were some large scattered boulders around.  I cast near one and the popper got attacked.  I couldn't tell which side of the boulder the Smallie dove down on...my side, or the downstream side.  It was a strong fish!  My line broke again.  I didn't see the popper float back up.  I tied one another popper and made a few more casts, then called it a day.  It took me @ 4 hours to work that 1/2 mile stretch of river.

Anyway, my expectations had been low, so I was extremely satisfied with the number and size of Smallies I was able to catch in this stretch of river on this day.  :)

Good Day of Fishing, 6-5-2014

I took Thursday off.
I decided to flyfish for Smallmouth Bass.  I tried a Chartreuse & Yellow Clouser first, with no takers.  I switched to a #6 F-C Pearl Shiner, and started catching fish.  The first two fish were nice 17" Smallies.  17" marked a new fly rod personal best of Smallmouth Bass for me.  My biggest ever is a 20-incher.

Then I caught a smaller bass @ 12", then had another big bass on.  That one shook free while I was focusing on reeling my slack line back on the reel.

The big Smallies seemed to stop hitting after that...I caught 11 more smaller ones.

I also caught my first IOWA fly rod Northern Pike.  It was only @ 18"-19", but it was still fun, and it was nice that it didn't cut my line before I could land it!  It hit a Clouser.

I caught a 9" Crappie on the Pearl Shiner as well.

I thought this empty Dragonfly Nymph case I found in the water was pretty cool:

After leaving there, I went to a public pond.  I caught at LEAST 40 Crappies (all 10" or less), 8 Bluegills, 1 Largemouth Bass, 2 decent Hybrid Sunfish, and 1 very beefy 8.5" Green Sunfish.  Most were caught on a Chartreuse microjig under an indicator.  There was another guy fishing the pond...he may have caught one or more fish.  At one point, I was pulling small crappies in every few seconds for about 20 minutes

And then later in the evening after dinner, I went out again, even though I was pretty exhausted.  I caught at least 30 Bluegills, and one 13" Largemouth Bass.  Some of the Bluegills were really nice fish.

The females appeared to still have at least some eggs.  Some of the males had such incredibly DEEP bodies, that their throat/chest areas began abruptly much lower than the rest of the head.  Kind of hard to describe.  Hopefully you can see it in the 2nd picture below.

It was quite a day of fishing!