Tiny Baetis mayflies are perhaps the most commonly encountered and imitated by anglers on all American trout streams due to their great abundance, widespread distribution, and trout-friendly emergence habits.
Wbranch on Jul 26, 2018July 26th, 2018, 12:51 am EDT
Two smallmouth on one lure! Also a bunch of fly rod back from when the river had lots of 11" - 15" fish eager to hit a Clouser. My best day ever was 59 smallies on the same fly! The Double Header is the 4th picture down.
Now I only catch really small fish 8" - 10" or bigger fish that come up from the lake in September through early November to feed on bait. Those fish are quite plentiful, a dozen a day is possible, and are 12" - 17".
Partsman on Jul 27, 2018July 27th, 2018, 11:04 am EDT
Wow Matt, never seen anything like that. Thanks for sharing it with us. I always enjoyed smallie fishing on the Auable river below loud dam, this was in the 70,s and my girl friends aunt and uncle had a cabin there. Great times fishing and mushrooming and 4 wheeling. I had a 1977 K5 blazer brand new, what a blast riding the trails and power lines up there.
Jmd123 on Jul 27, 2018July 27th, 2018, 1:15 pm EDT
I have not actually hooked two smallies at once like that, but I can actually see how it would happen. Many years ago I was fishing with my cousin on the connecting river between Intermediate Lake and Lake Bellaire and we found a "secret smallie hole" fishing on the bottom with worms. We started catching 16-18" smallmouth along with an 11" rock bass caught by my cousin. We watched one smallmouth chase another that we had hooked all the way up to the boat, the second fish making biting motions at the hooked one...we thought perhaps it was a male chasing a hooked female that he had been trying to spawn with on the beds, as it was in May when they bed up and spawn. So, it can happen!
Mike, as you may know I do my smallie fishing just below Five Channels Dam at the Pine Acres launch site. There's both plenty of current there and some big fly hatches, like Hex and Brown Drakes, that bring the smallies to the surface just like trout. Even caddisflies will bring them up, got my first ever 20-incher last year on a #12 elkhair caddis! I tried this again recently and found no fly hatches other than a few random bugs, but discovered I could get their attention by blooping poppers along the edges of the grassy islands. I am dying to do this again but I'm not dealing with the hordes of deerflies that assaulted me out there last time! I'll wait a few more weeks and give it another shot.
Jonathon
No matter how big the one you just caught is, there's always a bigger one out there somewhere...