Outfished

On Friday a friend/co-worker and I made a short notice trip to the usual urbanized and way too popular spot for some river smallies.

I knew, for a fact, how to fish for these things. There was activity, I knew the flies they liked, I knew how to retrieve. I was dialed in. Then my friend, who uses an ultralight spinning rod and PowerBait for now (still working on converting him), steps up to the plate. Not 20 minutes in and he's got them dialed in and hooked but lost a couple of fish. A few masterful tips from yours truely and he landed a smallish (but still nice) smallmouth. Two casts later, another quite large smallmouth, and the very next cast yet another nice sized smallmouth.

Meanwhile, I'm fishing the river exactly the way you're supposed to fish it and not getting so much as a strike and catching nothing more than aquatic vegetation.

Neadless to say, I didn't make a good showing for the fly rodder that day. Everything was right - even was fishing on the nose of a storm front - but I got skunked and my spinning rod friend killed them. His stats were: 3 landed, 5 hooked up, in roughly an hour and a half of fishing. Two fish in the 2lb range, one in the 1lb range.

He had to leave and we rode over together so when he dropped me off at my house, I immediately headed back over. I completely changed my tactics and caught two of four hits in about 35 minutes. Both of them under the 8" mark, one of which I skated across the surface. I switched from my usual Clouser patterns to a brown woolly bugger and stripped like a mad man - 12-14" at a time with very brief pauses between strips. The fly was barely subsurface and the fish were hammering it there.

I decided it was time to throw on a popper (I had tried early but no takes) but they showed no interest - they wanted the fly under the water but only barely. Actively hunting and feeding smallies are my favorite so far. As I was leaving I snagged/foul hooked/impaled a bait fish sized ... ? It had the coloration of a pike but was only about as long as an average index finger, same size around. Odd ball, and my fly was longer than it. I touched the leader but it wriggled itself free before I could get a great look at it. Honestly, as I was reeling in and felt a little bit of extra weight I thought it was just a piece of grass or drug paraphenelia something caught on the hook.

Regardless, I avoided my skunk and my buddy got a taste of big fiesty smallies on ultra light gear and had a lot of fun. This week will be tight - but I would put money on fishing together next week.