Bottom Feeders on the Surface??

My buddy Jay and I fished a local river yesterday evening for a bit.  The section we fished is downstream of a flood-control reservoir, which is still recovering from our early-summer rains. Consequently, the river is still flowing very high and fast.  There is some foam on the water that collects along shoreline eddies.  Water clarity was decent, but there was suspended rod-shaped algae particles in the water.

We went hoping to find White Bass & Wipers, and anticipated long casts would be necessary to reach the fish.  So, I left my fly rods in the car and too my spinning rods.  Big mistake.  Again.

Jay caught a small Smallmouth Bass on a Pop-R.  I saw signs of fish feeding in and under the foam along a shoreline eddy.  I foul-hooked a couple Smallmouth Buffalo.  I knew I could get these fish to hit a fly, so I dug in my sling pack and found a likely-looking fly (I had just taken my usual fly boxes out of my sling pack before I left the car, but still had some flies on the foam fly-patch inside the sling pack), and grabbed a larger strike indicator that would be visible even in the foam.  I set the indicator about 7" above the fly (the fly was a glass beadhead woolly bugger in kind of a natural mottled brownish color).  The fish were right under the areas with the thickest foam.  I don't think it would have been possible to get a floating fly to the bottom of the foam for the fish to actually find and eat.  But many of the fish had their mouths right up into the foam...a very unusual position for this species.

It took awhile, and I may have had several light strikes that I didn't bother trying to hook, but then I finally got a serious fish to hit it.    24" Smallmouth Buffalo, a new personal best on the fly rod for me.

Despite the low-slung mouth of a dedicated bottom-feeder, they are actually rather pretty fish.  They are blue-colored on their lower flanks.  This one had so much foam on him because of where I landed it, so I only took a picture of his pouty mug.

Flyfishing Report 7-7-2013

Its been awhile since I've seen so much poison ivy!
I drove north of Ames intending to flyfish Peterson Pit East for Crappies, Bass and Bluegills...and maybe wade the adjacent Skunk River for Smallmouth Bass.

For a number of reasons I won't bother detailing here, I missed the only path that would have led me down to the water of the pit on the east end of the pit.  Instead, I continued walking, ended up in the woods, and eventually came upon the river.

I arrived around 4:15pm.  The river was flowing nicely, compared to the nearly stagnant pools of the previous summer.  There were many places I could cross the river with only getting my knees wet.  I saw some river carpsuckers swim by.
I tried a variety of subsurface flies with no takers.  Got some interest from a bluegill on a bass-sized popper.  He wanted it, but didn't get hooked.  I stuck with that surface pattern, and ended up catching 3 Largemouth Bass, 2 Smallmouth Bass, and a Green Sunfish.

There were people both upstream and downstream of me, plus a group of college kids floated by on tubes.  So, I headed out.  But there was still plenty of sunlight left since it was only 6:45pm.  On my walk back to the car, I decided to look once more for a path down to the pit.  Amply lined with poison ivy, but I found it.

I saw Smallmouth Buffalo feeding along the rocks in the shallows all along the east shoreline.  There were hundreds!  I spent some time trying to catch one.  The first one I hooked up with broke my line.  The second one was vacuuming over the surface of a flat rock.  I put the fly in front and to the side of it, and hoped it would work its way over to the fly.  I watched it eat the Black Ops fly, and also saw the tap-tap-taps on my line before I set the hook.  It broke my line too, but only AFTER I landed it!

Smallmouth Buffalo

Smallmouth Buffalo

I also caught several Largemouth Bass, some Bluegills, one Crappie, and one Green Sunfish before I left the pit at 9pm.  It was a great way to spend an evening!

New Fly Rod "First":...the Smallmouth Buffalo!

I decided to head back to the little backwater area along the Des Moines River below Saylorville Lake...just downstream of the Cottonwood fishing pier.  The river is so low, there is a huge sandbar that separates a narrow water-filled channel near shore from the main river channel that is flowing near the opposite shoreline.    This narrow channel is pretty much "cut off" from the rest of the river right now.

During my last trip here this past weekend, I saw plenty of Carp, and suspected I was hearing Freshwater Drum.  I wanted to target both species, with special emphasis on the Drum since I haven't yet caught one on fly gear.  I read that black leech patterns, crayfish patterns, and white minnow patterns all catch Freshwater Drum, especially if you can keep them on/near the bottom.

I got on the sandbar near its downstream end, and started walking upstream along this stagnant channel.  I wasn't hearing the "drum" sound I'd heard last time.  Bummer.  I saw some Carp working the shallows.  I tossed an egg pattern to one.  It took the egg, I set the hook, and the line broke.  This was new line!  For some reason, I've been breaking a lot of the egg patterns off on carp during the hookset.

Next, I tied on a Mr. P's Carp Carrot and started working the deeper water of the channel, blind casting for Drum or whatever would hit.  I did get some strikes, but nothing hooked up.

Then I saw a small carp in the shallows working its way towards me, nosing into the bottom.  A dozen bad casts, and a couple good ones...I finally got the strike.  I set the hook, and had a good battle for a few minutes.  I discovered this was not a carp, but a Black (?) Buffalo (edit:  I've since learned that these are SMALLMOUTH BUFFALO)!  This is a new flyrod species for me, which is...AWESOME!  This one, 19.5" long, was caught on the Carp Carrot.

There were some Carp (or maybe Bigmouth Buffalo?) mouthing near the surface, so I switched my fly to a Blind Squirrel.  Eventually spotted another fish in the shallows and numerous casts finally got the fly where I wanted it.  The fish took it.  This was another Black (?) Buffalo (edit: SMALLMOUTH BUFFALO).  22.5" long.

I also caught a Bluegill on the egg pattern, a Hybrid Sunfish on the Carp Carrot, and 6 Green Sunfish on the Blind Squirrel.

Now... I need help figuring this out.  When I caught them, I assumed these two Buffalo were Smallmouth Buffalo.  But they really might be Black Buffalo.  I looked them both up online, studied descriptions and pictures...and I'm still not sure.  Lateral line scale counts and the habitat where these were feeding were slightly more suggestive of Black Buffalo.  But there is overlap on the scale counts between the two species.  Without a side-by-side comparison, I can't definitively tell by the other descriptive characteristics.  The Black Buffalo is typically darker in coloration, often with a bluish color on the sides.  Well, as you can tell from the first two pics, these certainly had some bluish tinting on the sides above their bellies, which was even more noticeable in person. The Smallmouth Buffalo has a larger eye, and is supposed to have lighter coloration (but this can depend on the waters where it is found, and they get darker during the breeding season...but that was several months ago).  There is a difference in mouth placement...and some have suggested the Black Buffalo has thicker lips.

Although I'm truly unsure (which is strange...I'm generally quite good with fish identification), I think for now I will go with Black Buffalo on these.  If there's anyone that has more experience with both of these species and thinks they can accurately tell which species this is based on my pictures, I'd LOVE to know!

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Addendum:  I changed the title to this post to accurately reflect the new information I received regarding the species identification.  I had posed the question and pictures to my friend Ben, who is a Fisheries Biologist with the IDNR for our area.  Here is his response:
"It’s always tough when you are trying to ID from a photo, rather than having the fish in your hand.  These two species are tough to tell apart, so don’t feel bad! 

However, I believe that you caught 2 smallmouth buffalo.  There are some body measurement ratios that the professionals use to separate these two species.  I analyzed these ratios from your photos and both fish fall out as smallmouth buffs.  In addition, and this is probably the best method, the smallmouth buff will have a keel in front of their dorsal fin.  Unfortunately, I don’t have top-down photos to tell.

Hope that helps Dave and congrats on the catch!"

That is good enough for me!  These shall henceforth be known as Smallmouth Buffalo, and in the future I will check for the presence of the keel in front of the dorsal fin.