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.