Smallmouth Stunts
7/03/26
They say fish have a brain the size of a pea. I have friends that say state raised trout, (pellet heads), are dumb. I’m not sure but sometimes I think the smallmouth I catch are pretty dumb also. They will chase and gulp a popper making commotion on the surface no matter what the color is at times. This is why I don’t spend too much time coloring, air painting or making my poppers eye-catching to the human eye. Just different colored poppers, tail feathers, dry hackle behind the foam popper and some rubber legs make enough commotion and must look like dying bait fish or swimming frogs that draw their attention. Every once in a while though I hook into a smallmouth that appears to have some thought of how to get unhooked or get into danger snags to the hooker. Besides them exploding out of the water, with a popper hook in their mouth trying to throw the hook, they have other stunts to get tangled up.
It was another clear blue sky with little cloud cover to speak of. Greenery lined the banks and the morning sun was still rising over the tree cover on the far bank. The water had a brown tint from previous night rain. I lined my 6 weight, 9’ fly rod and attached a popper to the no-knot snap. I put on my flippers and plopped the float tube in the water for a mile or so float. There was nearly a breeze and the section I was fishing was slow and not much faster, wavy water until way downriver near where I would be getting out. The water was in good depth which not shallow enough where I would be scraping bottom and yet just deep enough in the usual shallow areas where the smallmouth should be in and away from hugging the shaded banks until maybe the sun moves overhead of the river. I situated myself into my float tube and lit a cigar before pushing off.
As I was floating down river I was casting towards the middle of the river and towards the banks. My first activity was, after setting the hook on an exploding smallmouth at my popper, was a hefty smallmouth. He actually was pulling my float tube towards the middle of the river while I was flipping my way towards the bank where I could get a foot hold. Once I got a foothold and he wasn’t able to pull me, he exploded out of the water but not getting enough height to get his tail off the surface. His tail splashed water everywhere as his body wavered just above the surface. He dumped back into the water and there we tussled some before getting him to the apron.
Downriver, not far, I was drifting out from the bank, casting and down away towards the middle of the river. Almost at the end of the drift I started stripping the popper in intervals. I let the popper drift freely before making another strip when a smallmouth rose and grabbed it with an audible gulp. I waited a second and yanked the rod up for the hook set. The line tightened and the 6 weight bowed towards the expanding wavy circle where the smallmouth took my offering. I was able to get a foothold on the riverbed a ways out from the bank. The smallmouth fought with heavy pulls out towards the middle of the river. I wasn’t letting him have any line so he started to swim just downriver from me. I was bring in line when I noticed my 9 foot leader was pointing down towards a sunken ledge of a boulder. The smallmouth wasn’t swimming to either side of the boulder and it must have found a safe hideout under the boulder ledge. I tried lifting the rod and line high trying to coax him out but he wouldn’t move out. I could still feel his movement through the fly line. I started to tug the line left to right trying to get him to move out but he still wouldn’t cooperate. I was afraid if I kept it up my leader would eventually tear rubbing against the ledge. I slowly started to flipper towards the bank to be at an angle of the ledge. As I neared to him, with my rod towards the bank and high, he finally didn’t have the ledge for hiding behind and swam out downriver. Without any more stunts I was able to get him to the apron.
As I drifted I was hooking up and missing some of the hungry smallmouth with the popper. Some of them were nice size and some were smaller ones.
I was casting towards the bank when the water widened and got shallower across the river. The sun was up and shining down. There were log jams along the bank and half submerged boulders that hugged the bank. I was slowly drifting, touching bottom now and then, casting near the bank and down river from me. I started to strip the popper in and wham, a smallmouth rose and gulped it in. I dropped the rod tip and then yanked it high and another smallmouth tugged at the other end. He started to swim towards the bank so I moved the rod away trying to force him away from the logs. The rod sections bowed and forced him away. I was about 20 yards or so away from the bank but was able to get a foothold at times. The smallmouth was down river towards the bank and we were having a good battle with one another. Then suddenly the tight line stopped moving but I could still feel the fish moving. I started to drift down stream from where my rod tip was pointing. I felt the smallmouth had snagged us up on something. I had to let line out as I was trying to flipper my way upriver to see what we were caught on. When I got to the snag the smallmouth had wrapped the leader around a thin branch stuck to the bottom of the river with a bunch of thin twigs branching out. My line was pretty tangled in the twigs and looked like a thick spider web that intertwined in the twigs. The smallmouth was still hooked and it was if he was looking at me laughing like “now what are you going to do next?” I could see the hook was hooked pretty securely in his mouth as he was just swishing his tail to keep his upright position holding on. Maybe he thought he had me tangled so bad that I would just cut the line and he could swim out of it. Wrong! I took my time untangling the mess while he stayed put. I was breaking the wet flexible twigs and getting my leader untangled. Every once in a while the smallmouth was trying desperately to swim away but he tangled himself good and couldn’t break free until I got most of my leader free. Once I got the line straightened out to him he turned and took off towards the middle of the river. He seemed pretty worn out, from being tangled, and I was able to bring him in pretty quickly. I guess he thought getting himself tangled up I’d give up on him but it wasn’t so.
After letting him off the hook I continued floating down river casting poppers. I caught a couple more smaller smallmouth before the fast wavy water that was to fast to not watch where I was going. I was nearing my exit point and guided myself towards the bank. It was another enjoyable float hooking up with some ‘smart’ smallmouth!
~doubletaper
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