Last Light and the Riffle Rumble

[brhoff]

Ended up with some spare time this afternoon and decided to head out to my favorite Smallie flow here in town...didn't bother to check the gauge, the river has been lacking water for the last week or so...but, what the heck.

Pulled up, realized I had broken my 9' rod...oh well, switched the reel to my 7' 3wt...not realizing the leader was set up for topwater...starting casting and discovered the leader was hinging badly with a Clouser on...top water had no love today...carried on anyway.

It got cloudy and windy, rained a bit then cleared. The whole time, I was picking off Rock Bass like mad and hit 3-4 Smallies.

Met a guy named Bill, he was fly fishing as well...we didn't solve any of the worlds problems, simply talked fly fishing and local rivers, left him with a topwater that I tie and moved on.

Hit that trough in the late afetrnoon where no respectable fish will be caught and decided to head on up to a GREAT RIFFLE, hoping to be in place for last light.

Slowly I creep up the side of this riffle, it goes the entire width of the river. I am off balnc and casting poorly with my limping leader. As I get about halfway up th riffle, I see something big chasing something a bit smaller about 25 feet ahead at the head of the riffle...thinking quickly, I realize that I have one shot and take it....WHAM, the Smallie whaled the Clouser, jumped and landed in the middle of the riffle on it's side spinning like a broken frisbee...sudeenly it found it's legs and jumped about 6 feet over and dove...not sure how but I managed to pull this 18" out of the current to hand.

Pulled 3-4 more 12-14" out of this head pool and headed for home.

[Grubb]

Thats one wonderful sounding evening, I have to admit I haven't yet caught a smallie that large on a fly rod, but I enjoyed reading about yours... May I ask what color fly you use most for smallies?

[brhoff]

Color?

This riffle shot was a green over white Clouser but thoughout the day, I also caught on orange over brown as well as a Crappie Candy dressed in chart. and white.

I don't realy think color is such an issue, some do, I don't.

[Grubb]

Maybe not, I really am not that sure either, it may be that I just have more confidence in some colors over others. We have a lotta grass here in our river so I use woolie boogers that stay al high in the water and black seems to work best for me as apposed to green so I just thought I would see if you had a specific color that you preferred. Thank you for responding, I know it was tight getting that smallie ouutta that riffle, and, alot of fun...

[Wild One]

Man!
I gotta get down there. Thanks for the PM BTW. Was this beast in the same area?

Glad to hear you got out before the storms came in hard. I'm not surprised that the bite was not on for the top water though...at lunch on the 'Nut all of my smallies where on my krystal black bugger, whereas usually they'll destroy my gurglers.

Nice report man, I could just see that behemoth going crazy in the riffles. And on a 3 wt!!

[jsalkas]

Got out myself to fish a new creek in the Chicago area on Thursday night. Cleaned up on small bass 9 - 13" all evening with my dad. Even though it was shallow top water was also not producting like a little bead head olive bugger. He got the trophy of the night, a nice 14"
Maybe 30 - 40 fish a piece