Tuesday's Fishing Trip Produced a First!

Tuesday’s regular fishing trip was on beautiful Smith Lake. I say regular because Tuesday and Thursday are my fishing days, and the rest of the week is taken up with the gym and catching up on chores. Man, it is nice being retired!

The trip started around 6 AM and ended at 10:30.  The setup for the day was again the 5 wt and 4 wt rods rigged with a size 4 popper on the 5 wt. and a size 4 Zonker on the 4 wt. I was targeting Kentucky Spots and landed 6 in the 12” range, but missed out on the larger fish. They were not hitting the popper as well as I had seen them hit in the past, so I had to really work the bug to get the takes I got. The one thing I have discovered on Smith when using the poppers is you must find a shade to get a take, and after 10 AM that is hard to do. The perfect time to land quality spots on the lake is daylight. After the sun comes up you are either looking for shade or going down under with buggers, crawfish, craws, zonkers, or any other fly that produces a slow fall. This lake is gin clear and shade or daylight is a must for success on top. I did manage to land a quality catfish using the zonker on a slow fall stripping the line as if I was using a streamer, and in a way, the zonker is a streamer pattern. The catfish was a first for me on the fly and I have to say it gave the 5 wt a good bend. I am off the rest of this week because my wife and I are spending some quality time with our grandson in Tennessee. Who knows I just might share a few Bryson stories with you guys this week. Take care everyone.





He really wanted the Boggle Bug

The Kentucky Spot fights like the Smallmouth, that is why I love to go after them

The Zonker in craw color, this was a nice male catfish

First Fly Outing on Smith for the Kentucky Spots

Monday was my first trip this year for me to fish for the Kentucky Spots using the fly rod on Smith Lake. I started out using a size 4 Boggle Bug in dark turquoise on my 4 wt. After a few minutes of casting I discovered that the size 4 popper was a little too much bug for the 4 wt because it required to much effort to get the distance I wanted. I had my 5 wt with me but it was rigged with a cream Wooly Bugger. I usually fish the size 4 Boggle Bugs with the 5 wt, but I needed the backbone of the 5 wt for the Buggers, to help with hook set. With all that said I lost the lone Spot of the morning on the turquoise popper, and never got to stretch the leader again with that fly. The top water action was not happening so I decide to go to the Wooly bugger and a Craw. I did manage to land two Spots using a cream bugger and the other three spots was landed using a unique craw pattern tied by Pat Cohen from the blog Warm Water Journal. This craw is amazingly life like, and will be one of my top producing flies this season. Pat ties some exceptional flies and this pattern is just one of many he ties. The spots in this lake feed heavily on crawfish and this fly is the perfect imitation to entice big hits. The down side of this whole trip was the fact I only got to fish an hour, because my crack battery went out. I have learned over the years if you own a boat, there is always something that is going wrong with it, and today was an example.

Good fight on the 5wt--the lake is super clear so this spot had no trouble seeing the Craw. I expect to land some larger Spot using this fly.

This Craw pattern is going to be a winner on this lake for me, because the bass have not seen anything like this pattern before

The Tornados That Hit Our State

Needless to say I didn’t accomplish my goal of landing 100 bluegills during the month of April. The horrendous Tornados that hit Alabama this past week put an end to my quest.  I must say I have never seen destruction like my family and I have seen this past week. It all started Wednesday morning with the start of over 100 tornados that pounded the state all day and into the night. Power is not restored as of yet to most of the state, and parts of the state will not have power restored for weeks. The subdivision that my family and I live in lost electricity Wednesday morning and was not restored until Friday night. Our area escaped with some minor damage such as trees down and power lines down. We feel very blessed that we survived all three tornados that came our way and pray and feel for all those that lost family and all their belongings. You don’t realize how precious life is until you go through and experience something like we witnessed and went through this past week.  I am sure most of you have seen the destruction and damage through the news media, but for those of you who may have missed the footage the videos below show the actual events.