Let me start by saying that I am no smallmouth expert. In fact, when I’m on the Root, I usually run into them by accident instead of intentionally fishing for them. Last night was a different story as I deliberately went to the Root to go after some smallies with the fly rod considering that’s about all I caught last week down there.
The water levels are very low, very clear, and pretty warm on the Root. I talked to a landowner who said this is as low as he’s seen the Root in 35 years. With that said, I caught about 15 smallmouth ranging from four to fourteen inches all on black and olive woolly buggers using about 4X line, which is pretty par for the course. I like to use 3X when streamer fishing, but the Root is like a fish bowl right now, so I had to downsize a bit.
At dusk I was fishing a riffle head that drops into a pretty deep and slow pool when the fish started to rise pretty well. I switched to using two nymphs with the trail nymph being a soft hackled fy that resembles an emerger. I threw up into the riffle head and let it drift down slightly raising the rod at the end of the drift to mimic an emerging insect. This little tactic left me shaken at times as several trout in the 16-18 inch category came out of the wtaer to try and hit the emerger.
Before I left I tied on a huge Madame X pattern (a grasshopper imitation) and trailed it with the Black Wet Fly. The second drift through the pool, a trout hit the trailer and broke off both flies like they were nothing. With light fading fast, I tied on the same pattern again only upping to 3X. I landed the last trout of the evening taking the kipe jawed dandy on the Madame X. He topped out at 19.5 inches.
It seems right now that once the sun gets a bit high on the horizon, the fishing gets tougher for the rest of the day, but once the sun starts to set, you have a good 45 minute window of opportunity when the fish are active and very cooperative.
I guess the moral of the story is that even with the clear water that is deterring anglers from hitting the local streams, fish can still be caught – you just have to change your tactics and time of day ( or night in this case) you’re out there.
Later,
D.A.