Big Smallmouth

 When there are talks about which fish fights the hardest, smallmouth seem to be mentioned every time. I decided I wanted to target larger smallmouth to see if they match their reputation. I hired Matt Reilly who runs a guide service out of VA and TN. He has a ton of experience fishing for smallmouth and musky and I knew if anyone could put me on a 20" smallmouth it was him. 

We fished the last week of August and there was a heat wave making the conditions challenging. The high was 90 with humidity. The river still looked great, and our hopes were high.

In less than 30min we saw some cruising smallmouth and had a few chances to get a fly in front of them. We were using large sz2 poppers. Matt informed us that when fish get this big they no longer fear predators and take their time eating a fly. We witnessed this several times as large fish would inspect the fly only to turn away. The fish were being picky and the longer we could keep our fly dead drifting the better. The key was to cast and do nothing. Let the fly just drift and don't move it at all. 

The great thing about getting a guide is not only their knowledge of the water but they are always on guard looking for anything fishy. I was having a conversation, looking at my fly line and kind of acting lackadaisical when I heard "SET THE HOOK!" 

I lifted my rod as quick as possible, and I noticed my fly was gone. The rod bent over and acted like it was hung on a log. The log started to move and head upstream, and I could see from the bronze flash I had a good-sized fish on. Matt knew it was a smallie right away and it was by far the biggest I had ever hooked. The fish made several good runs and if I didn't have an 8wt the fight probably would have lasted twice as long as it did. The fish finally came to hand it was just shy of 20inches.

The fight definitely lived up to the hype. 

The rest of the day we had plenty of chances at fish, but they either didn't cooperate, or we spooked them. I did get one that did something even Matt was surprised at. The fish came up checked out the fly, refused it, then I cast in front of it again. The fish let the fly drift over it, then I gave it a small twitch and it slowly swam up and inhaled the fly. 

The coloring on this fish was gorgeous. What was surprising is usually the fish wanted the fly dead on the water not moving at all, but this fish wanted a little action. That's what was hard about the day there was no consistent technique to get fish to hit. Even with the challenges it was an amazing day and I look forward to fishing with Matt again. If you want to catch big smallmouth and are in the VA, TN area give Matt Reilly a call. You won't be dissapointed. 

Pellet Pig

It's been way too long since my last fishing post. I've been fishing here and there I haven't been motivated to write anything. It's been a year or so since I fished for trout and to be honest, I started to wonder if I could even remember how to catch one anymore. I ran out of excuses and checked out a delayed harvest stream to try my luck. 

I couldn't have asked for better weather. I wasn't surprised to see people fishing the usual spots. It was encouraging to see fish swimming around from the bank. I saw a school that was in a peculiar spot and worked my way to them. It didn't take long to catch my first trout of 2024. 

I started to feel more confident after that and the fish kept coming. It's easy to get full of yourself fishing stocked delayed harvest water. If you can get on a school of fish, it's not uncommon to catch 20 fish in 30 minutes. You catch one on almost every cast. I'm not saying it doesn't take skill. You need to know when to set the hook and how to fight the fish, but the fishing is artificial in a way. The longer the fish are in the water after being stocked the more their behavior will change. 

I hit them when they were still in the discovery stage checking things out. There were a few that would act natural and hit the flies on a good drift or when the flies were falling. Then you had the fish for a lack of better words are dumb. They hit the fly after you twitch it or made erratic movements. These types of things would normally scare a fish or turn them off when a fish has been in the stream for a while. 

Even understanding the fishing was easy and that was the main reason for my success I enjoyed myself and even managed to hook an absolute pig. This fish didn't put up an extraordinary fight but it sure was something to look at. 

I didn't bring my net so I worked the fish into shallow water where I could get a hold of it. The fish was so tall I couldn't get my hand around it. 

It's nice to hook one of these monsters once in a while. I'm hoping this trip will motivate me to get out on the water more. The drive and thoughts of a bad fishing day usually make me look for other things to do but this trip reminded me of how much I love being on the water. 

Hurricane Helene Perspective

It's hard to believe I haven't posted in almost 2yrs. So much has happened since then but more of it was related to things in my personal life rather than fishing. I had back surgery, got into playing pickleball and didn't fly fish much at all. Kids sports have really cut into my free time but other than that I don't have a lot of excuses. This fall was going to be my season to get back into trout fishing but hurricane Helene changes that. 

If you don't live on the east coast or have seen news about the damage from the hurricane but don't know what's true and what fake, I can give you some incite. 

4 days after the storm hit my wife and I took supplies to the people in Todd, NC. 

On the way to the mtns from Raleigh we saw several trucks with long bed trailers loaded with supplies. 

We were able to get there fine but on HWY194 there were signs of flooding and several places where debris was on the road. It literally looked like some parts of the road were cleared with in 24hrs of us being there. We saw lots of destruction, military vehicles driving around, destroyed houses, and people sorting through what they had left, but we also witnessed several people helping each other and offering hot meals. 

Many people lost all they had and in the rural mountains and that's not a ton to begin with. My brother-in-law works as a volunteer rescue squad member and he told me most of the severe damage was west of Boone, NC. The main issue was over 30 inches of rain fell in a span of 3 days. The flooding caused landslides and took out bridges. He told stories of several being killed or trapped in their collapsed homes and even more of people who were stuck in their location and couldn't be rescued because it was just too dangerous at the time. 

I have not been back but have had several friends and family that have went to Western North Carolina to offer help. The stories have been mostly the same. There's so much damage and destruction but those that survived are happy to be alive and resilient that they can rebuild. 

The article below has a donation link and even more about the facts from this storm and the damage it caused to NC. If you're able to donate to the relief of this tragedy, please do. 

Rapid Reaction: Historic Flooding Follows Helene in Western NC - North Carolina State Climate Office