BRIEF– The cold water seasons of late fall and winter produce high percentages of big fish if you shift your fishing locations and use the right techniques. Naturally, there are biological reasons why the big boys bite better than the small fry in extra cold water (below 48 degrees). But what a smallie fan really […]
Baboons, desert heat and smallmouth bass. They don’t often go together, but they do in Africa. But of course, these guys knew their local waters far better than some fella who (literally) just got off the plane. They were under 40 and (like most of their countrymen) in great shape. So I sure wasn’t showing […]
BRIEF– To best cast bass flies, use a line one or two weights over the rod’s “official” rating. If you’re an average or intermediate caster, use a line two weights over the rod rating. Only go down to a line one weight over the rod rating if you’re a bona fide expert caster and can […]
You need a good anchor system, one that you can operate quickly and easily with one hand. A traditional anchor that must be thrown overboard and then hand-hauled back in is noisy, dirty, slow and very tiring. This will not do the job. You need an anchor that remains outside the hull and an anchor […]
BOOK EXCERPT—- Hawaii– sun, sand beaches, sea breezes, snorkeling, palm trees and tourists everywhere, right? For that reason it was never high on my list of “must see” places… until I discovered Hawaiian jungle smallmouth. However, it isn’t just mainlanders who have never heard of this odd fishery; few on the islands have either. Hardly […]
This fly has a bright, flashy cactus chenille body, moderately weighted with lead wire, and a rabbit-strip tail. It might not seem elaborate or particularly exotic, but the Cactus Bugger is a genuine workhorse of a pattern. > It’s easy to retrieve effectively > The fly can be fished fast or slow > It works […]
BOOK EXCERPT– This wasn’t good. I was coughing and spitting water, and I could see blood—mine– below the surface… Grabbing my 7-foot medium-action spin stick and a few lures in a small tackle bag, I headed back down the shoreline for half a mile to where I had noticed the most rock. It was late […]
Why New Fly Weights? Many fly fishers obsess over finding just the right color fly for this or that situation. While color can certainly influence your catch rate, often an even more important factor is completely overlooked. That’s a fly’s weight. The weight (or sink rate) of a fly determines how deep it will get […]
This pattern isn’t for every situation. This unique fly is designed specifically for tempting wary or inactive smallmouth with a very slow-paced bottom presentation. Used properly, this fly can do what no other patterns do. With weight in the front and its upriding tail, the HiTail Craw can be crawled or slowly hopped along the […]
North America’s largest bodies of water, the Great Lakes are difficult to imagine if you haven’t seen them. Like freshwater oceans, they encompass tens of millions of acres with far distant shorelines invisible to the eye. For smallie fans used to little meandering rivers, you might think a body of water like Lake Michigan sounds […]
