South Fork

[Bob Richey]

For the past two weekends, I've floated the South Fork from mile 13 to 19 and have had pretty good success for late summer. The water's gin clear, so I've gone down to  3x tippet. I've been finding good numbers in the fast water, especially on the lip of riffles.  Usually, I switch to a crayfish, or helgramite pattern this late in the summer, but they're still hitting shenks and pearl marauders, so why switch?  I did land two 15 inchers in slower water near the bank.  Mostly, we paddle down to each riffle, get out and swing some streamers then paddle on to the next riffle.  I had started by fishing poppers on the bank, but I kept getting bluegills so I switched over.

[TurbineBlade]

Hi Bob -- sounds like fun.  We do the same thing on floats.  The biggest fish I've managed seem to be when I make long casts off of the front of the canoe to structure well before the boat getting there to tip them off.  Naive fish act a LOT differently than ones that are even remotely aware of humans/disturbance.  

I usually just use 8-10 pound stuff for most flies, but have probably used 4 pound maxima (4x dia) on and off with small streamers, and the 15 pound mono does better with the monster poppers.  I find smallmouth to be a lot more sensitive to disturbance than tippet.  

Gene

[Bob Richey]

The biggest fish I caught yesterday was this fat smallie near the boat landing.  We were waiting for the canoe livery to pick us up and I waded out and stripped a streamer along the bank from the middle of the river.  The fish was following it and I thought for sure it would turn away when it got close to me, but when I paused the strip, she just sipped it in and I was able to land it.