A cool evening lured me to a series of river pools so familiar that fishing there is like visiting an old friend. Armed with a 3 weight, I was determined to use dry flies to entice the Green Sunfish and brightly-colored Longear populations. A size-10 brown Bivisible skittered across still pockets between rocks was regularly inhaled. Thirty fish had fallen for the tactic before a cast behind a half-submerged log was met with a swirl that caused the fly to surf the wake. I suspected it was a sizeable bass and speculated that a larger fly was necessary. The largest fly in my dry fly box was a size-8 Muddler Minnow that I hoped would be mistaken for a large grasshopper. My cast landed with a “splat” and the fly was twitched immediately to mimic a grasshopper’s frantic attempts to escape. The Muddler disappeared in a foamy spray that caused the big smallmouth to vault toward open water. Even with this stroke of luck, I was seriously under-gunned both with my rod and the 5X tippet I was using. A tense battle fought in open water enabled steady, light pressure to tire the great fish. Finally, it swirled within arm’s length but as I reached hoping to “lip” the bass, a final head shake freed the bronzeback I’d estimated at 18 inches. As I regrouped on a streamside rock, wild turkeys flew overhead to the tall oak trees on the bluff across the river.
An Oldie But a Goodie
