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.