the not wholly unexpected double posting: bass fishing

This is about as good a time as any to show you a picture from my trip to Central PA last week. From Penn's Creek. One of the most famous trout rivers in Pennsylvania, on the east coast even. It's very hard fishing. The fish are ultra selective and fight like bulls on acid at a bullfight on acid. I hooked up with a couple big ones on the elk hair suplhur emergers but they broke me off. After an hour of casting at the one trout sipping something delicately off the surface under an overhanging hemlock branch, losing three or four flies in the process, the breaking off is a real let down. But, such is life. I'm walking up the river, about a mile or so upstream from the Poe Paddy bridge and I come across a very deep run along the bank. It looks maybe six or eight or even ten feet deep. Very deep and very long for Penn's. So I tie on a Wool Bugger, run that through the hole a couple times. Nothing. I know big brown trout eat crayfish. So I tie on one of my big, fat, #4 crayfish flies that I use for bass, weighs about seven pounds, and toss that thing in there, ticking it off the bottom.

Now I hope you all remember the lesson I learned a couple weeks ago in Pennsylvania, because it is immediately relevant. If you use a bass fly, you'll probably catch bass.

So I'm ticking it off the bottom. Tick. Tick, tick. Tick. SHAKE. SHAKE, SHAKE. I set the hook. Missed him. That was a big fish nice. I throw the shotput back in the hole. Tick. Tick, tick. SHAKE. BOOM. I set the hook. The fish makes a run downstream, sending the reel's drag into a screaming fit. HAHAHA. Nice.

Smallmouth don't fight as long as big trout, in my experience, but they fight strong.

What I love so much about this is that I caught this big smallmouth in a famous trout river. Nice. Click for bigger.




Today is a good day to post this picture because yesterday, thank the good lord, I caught two decent sized smallies at Clear Creek. Finally. That was probably my six or seventh trip there and it finally paid off. Caught a lot of fish last night. Sunfish, rock bass, some other bass I think. All on a green popper. Nice top water fishing. But a little after eight, it began to get dark, and BOOM. A big take. Made my reel scream again. I love that. It's rare when I trout fish.

R fucked with my camera when I saw him last and I thought I fixed everything but I didn't. He had the ISO set at 400. So these fish look a little funny. They really were a little on the yellow side though.

Click both for bigger.







And yes. Please do check up on our friend Stunt Pilot Buck Jones in the post below.