Smallies On zee Fly!!

For the past week, my friend Hutt and I have been making the trip out to his families new property on the South Harpeth where it is absolutely loaded with Smallmouth, Redeye, Largemouth, and Bluegill. I use about a #8 Olive Woolybugger and it just wrecks shop on this river. Every time I throw it into a deeper hole or riffle, if I'm not getting strikes by Bluegill or litte Shad, then it's by a Smallie or a Redeye usually. Hutt and I fished this past week three times and for each of those three times, we probably caught a total of 30 fish or more in less than two hours. I caught this fat Redeye on one the Olive Woolybuggers and Hutt caught this Largemouth on a little swim-bait of some sort.

On our last day of the week fishing here (Thursday); me, Hutt, and my oldest brother Nat got on the water at about 4:15 pm and we quickly waded up to a deep hole where Hutt said he had had some big strikes in here. So we all got up to this hole and Nat was up top, Hutt in the middle, and me down low. As I began to fish, I found a big Smallmouth chasing Bluegill off and even eating some little Bluegill. It was an awesome sight to see. This fish was ferocious, literally eating anything in it's path. So I started throwing my Olive Woolybugger about 5-7ft in front of where it was eating and let my fly sink down to the fish's depth. Then I just mildly stripped in the Woolybugger seing if I could get this Smallie to eat it. Sure enough he chased it and acted like he was going to eat it.... but he never really committed.

So I threw the same exact cast, and sped up my strips a lot and made the intervals between strips shorter. This definitely got his attention but again he wouldn't really commit to the fly. After doing this probably eight times, I knew I had to change flies. But I also knew I could catch this fish if I pissed him off enough. So I put on a J.J. Special and started stripping hard and fast. Finally, on probably the third cast with the J.J. he smacked it. This fish just destroyed my fly and he was a fighter right off the bat, jumping probably 3 feet out of the water twice! It was awesome and he even began to take out some drag. Which was also probably due to the fact that I was using 7x fluorocarbon tippet but still. This was a healthy fish! After maybe one minute of hard fighting, this Smallie gave in and I finally got him in my hands. Awesome fish and even better fight!!

After that, the three of us sort of just cruised down river catching some Bluegill and smaller Redeye. But at another deep hole, my brother found a BIG Smallie that no doubt was at least a pound bigger than the one I was holding in my hand in that picture. I began to cast at him and I got him to look once but we had to leave right after I started fishing for this monster. I'll definitely have to come back and try again at this beast!

Stay tuned because tomorrow I'm going down to Hutt's farm "Cabin Creek" in Giles County, TN to fish for some huge Largemouth like this one caught by my oldest brother two years ago. And I'm going after these Hogs on a fly so this should be intense (Hopefully)!!