Thanks guys. I will try and give a report when I get back.
Thanks guys. I will try and give a report when I get back.
Olive or brown Woolley Buggers all the way. Also, black or purple bunny leeches work great. Clousers in brown and orange, or olive and white.
I fly fish for SM all summer in the Shenandoah. I would take some chartreuse poppers (sky blue is hot here, but I have had good luck with chartreuse also) and some crawfish patterns. Check out FOTW archives for examples. I fish the crawfish under an indicator, drift them through the deep runs, close to the bottom, sometimes 7 feet below the indicator. When the indicator twitches, set the hook with all you got, both with the rod and stripping hand.
"Fishermen are born honest, but they get over it"
Ed Zern
Well I am back. What was suppose to be a 3 day Kayak fishing trip turned into 1 because of snow , freezing temperatures and a nasty north wind. The river was a little high but clear, but the previous yrs flooding had lots of trees across the river. One of my buddies turned over about 1/3 of way into an 8 mile stretch.
We caught lots of Smallies in the deep pools': back eddies , slow lazy-suzan whirlpools ,and counter flows. Some times we would get out and fish and and sometimes we stayed in our kayaks. Even they my 2 friends fly fish they fished ultra light spin cast rods w/ jig head soft plastics w/ wiggle tails.
I did equally well with weighted rubber legged crayfish flies. One of the best ways for me w/ a fly rod in the 15+ foot deep pools was to anchor in the slow central current current and cast the rocky banks and hop and sit the crayfish down stream in the counter flows. I did catch a smallie or 2 on a brown over yellow Clouser, but my Clouser's did not get to the bottom quickly enough to suit me. I will post a picture or 2 once I get things sorted out.
Thanks for the help
Well, you're better off with the snow than I am with the flooding. I was all set to leave Wednesday to fish the eastern side of the Ozarks (St. Francis, Black, Castor Rivers) and spend a day fly fishing for bass and longnose gar (really) on Lake of the Ozarks, but that area has gotten two straight days of rain and the river I was most looking forward to fishing has record high flows. It has more water in it right now than the Yellowstone can and still be fishable, and it's normally 1/6 the size of the Yellowstone. I imagine it's close to "trees and houses" level.
So no Ozarks trip for me...