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3. Cooke Pond smallies on three different mayfly hatches

With our nice stable weather and reasonably high temperatures, I figured the Hex was getting near. Yesterday as I was getting ready for a class field trip (bass pond at Clark's Marsh) I saw big mayflies on the steps of our local campus (Huron Shores). So I headed out to Cooke to do some dry fly fishing for those big, blocky smallmouth. About 5 minutes after getting out on the water a smallmouth hit, fought for about a minute, and threw the hook on a #2 all-chartreuse hairwing streamer fly. I moved slightly further downstream (it's more like a river than a lake in this location), having seen a few rises, and put on a #12 White Wulff, having seen some white mayflies that looked like Light Cahills. Missed the first strike, then boated two nice smallies, 17" and 15". By this point I started seeing a LOT of Brown Drakes floating past me and a LOT of feeding fish all around me, so on went a Brown Drake pattern in size 6 like last time...two more nice smallmouth, one of 18 1/2", and a largemouth of about 16", who was feeding very close to shore and jumped several times trying to throw the hook. Well, the mayflies just kept coming after it started to get dark, and they started looking more yellow than brown, so I switched to a Hex pattern in size 6 and got one more fish, a 19" smallie that is only 1/2" shy of my personal record. My wrist was getting sore holding on to these brutes!

Our summer hatch season has begun, and it can only get better from here on out! Too bad the big flies don't hatch on any of my local trout waters, but the Rifle gets a killer Light Cahill hatch that gets the water boiling pretty good!

Jonathon

Nice! I love flyfishing for Bass in the Summer, nice fish, thanks for the pics :)

Wow! Nice fish! On the 3 wt, Jonathon?

No, Kyle, I must admit that I used my 9' 5wt to reach out for more distance and to propel bigger streamers. Two years ago I managed to boat an 18-incher on the little 3, honestly now I don't know how I did that! (I even landed a 19.5" on it once...insane!) These guys just pulled like hell and I'm not sure little 3 would stand up to the strain...still not bad considering most folks go after bass with a 7 or 8 weight, and most folks wouldn't think of fishing mayflies for rising bass either! Gotta love smallies, hit dry flies just like trout and fight even harder.

Jonathon

Awesome smallmouth on the dry fly. Congratulations. I'm envious!

Just got back from Arizona, love your pics, fish and wonderful daughter. My daughter and granddaughter flew out there with my wife and myself. Sort of a family reunion, and I must admit as I get older my family means so much more to me than anything. Hopefully I will be up fishing on Thursday.
Mike.

Smallies on the surface rival any fish. My first experience with them on the fly was last year on the Huron River. I Was fishing sliders and streamers but I've never had a "match the hatch" experience. Nice

Awesome fishing Jonathon! Congrats1