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Dave, My absolute go-to pattern for warm water and cold water rivers is a black mohair yarn leech, either beadhead or not. I tie them on size 10 2xl hooks for bream and size 6 or 4 for bass. That said, the bass take the size 10 leech patterns as well as the larger patterns, especially in the early spring. My first fish of the year was just a tad smaller than the bass you show in your photos. I'm guessing she was about 17-18 inches long. I have tons of other patterns that I take out with me, but it in the spring time, I never seem to find a reason to switch patterns.
Jim Smith
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Thanks, Jim. VERY interesting. I had noticed in past years that I seem to catch big bass on smaller patterns early in the year. Our water temperatures are probably in the mid-40's and climbing right now. Not sure if that has any bearing on it. I tossed some big patterns during lunch this week, and didn't get any interest at all. Conventional wisdom was that early season bass want a bigger meal, because the available forage (sunfish/baitfish) would be nearly a year old by now. But maybe they are targeting nymphs and leeches because they expend less energy catching those when the water is this cold? And then by mid-April last year, the bass were hitting the bigger stuff.
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Jim, you've yet to steer me wrong, so I added a black mohair leech to my fly rotation recently. It has worked very well! It has caught crappies, bluegills, and hybrid sunfish....and some bass too.
Our water temps still haven't warmed up much yet. The little microjig is still inexplicably catching some really nice bass in the past week or so.
This one was an 18.5-incher:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psb9zpfxs3.jpg
And here's a 20-incher! Look how tiny the microjig is compared to this fish's mouth!:
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...psdvwd5nvo.jpg
I put on a a larger chartreuse craft fur baitfish pattern late in the evening after catching that 20-incher, and caught a couple smaller bass on it.
http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c2...pswdpb6utm.jpg
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