Back home again … in Indiana; yep, we loaded up the camper last week and made the 12 hour trip from northwestern Wisconsin. To be honest, neither Vickie nor myself were ready…but we have a wedding, our oldest son, Harrison, is getting married soon and thus we left the beauty of the northern woods.
After a few days of cleaning, repairing, etc… of our camper I gave Frank a call to see if he wanted to give the fall smallmouth a try and the answer was a quick yes. We headed north about an hour and dropped Frank off at one point, I would go downstream about 4 miles.
To be honest fly-rod smallmouth fishing in autumn can be a big question … as the fish sometimes turn on and at other times I have found them to be a bit snarky about what they will eat. We also knew that the leaves were on the way down which can also add to the challenge; I decided to go with a heavy fly that would ‘cut’ through the leaves … and that seemed to work well on the day.
The water was low, in fact the lowest I have ever seen it which meant yet another challenge to deal with. One thing for sure when you find fall fish you can catch multiple fish as they are loaded up in a small area.
I decided to go with waders as the air temps were in the upper 50’s and while I love to wet wade, getting cold and staying cold can ruin an outing. The water was cold, but not so cold that I got the idea the fish wouldn’t eat.
For sure, you have to think like a fish…where would I be if I were looking for a meal. In this stream it was in deeper water at the base of large logs and dead stumps. While the water was clear, if you stay back and keep your mudline from moving into the prime area…you can work all the cover pretty competently.
Anyway, it was indeed a great day as you will see from the video. As I neared the deeper water I found the fish! To find and then land a number of nice fish on a spectacular day was just what the doctor ordered. If you have any questions you can contact me by using the comment section at the bottom of this page.
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