tying

Baitfish for Smallmouth Bass . . . and Trout

By Jeff Morgan

Smallmouth bass patterns have been driven by eastern fly fishers. But Western smallmouth have a unique food source. Here are some flies that match what they eat in springtime.

estern fly fishers are beginning to give smallmouth bass the respect they deserve. These gamey fish put up a stiff fight capable of placing a fat bend in trout-sized fly rods. Their versatile habitat preferences--from clear, swift rapids to sluggish, turbid waters--allow anglers to cater to their favorite tactics.

Many fly fishers turn to the tried and true classic smallmouth patterns: crayfish imitations, poppers, and Woolly Buggers. These traditional patterns have been honed on famous Eastern waters, where they have hooked innumerable smallmouth over the decades.

A Unique Diet for Western Smallmouth

Western smallmouth bass, however, have a food resource that Eastern smallmouth often don't: salmon and steelhead smolts. For the last five decades, fishery managers have saturated rivers with large numbers of salmonid smolts. The springtime migration of smolts coincides with smallmouth spawning season, placing vulnerable surface-loving prey in the same habitats as aggressive predators. The result is inevitable, and on many of the premier Western smallmouth rivers--the Umpqua, Columbia, Willamette, John Day, Snake, Russian, or Sacramento Rivers--migrating smolts make up 75% or more of a smallmouth's springtime diet.

Nonetheless, western fish and game departments have repeatedly argued that non-native gamefish species do not feed on smolts. Logic and observation suggests otherwise. Watch the surface of the lower Umpqua or Columbia in late May or June. Surface-orientated hatchery-bred smolts on these rivers feed on emerging midges. Occasionally a reverse V will appear behind the smolt, indicating a hungry smallmouth is on its tail. A quick cast of a smolt imitation in the vicinity of the V, and the life of that smolt just might be saved!

Many smallmouth caught on smolt imitations will have dead smolts still hanging out their gullet when they are landed. Given the choice of hard-to-catch crayfish or small drifting insects, the open-water, naÏve smolt is simply an irresistible food resource for a stream-dwelling smallmouth.

Small is Good

While most of these migrating smolts are five to seven inches long, smallmouth will happily turn to a smaller smolt for multiple reasons. First, smaller smolts are slower than larger smolts and thus easier to overtake. Second, smallmouths have small mouths (surprise!), at least compared to other black bass, and a smaller smolt is easier to inhale on the run.

In addition, small smolt imitations expand the range of smallmouth that will be interested in your fly. Instead of appealing to the occasional large smallmouth, a size 6-10 imitation should prove tempting to any smallmouth over seven inches long.

New Patterns

Traditional streamers such as Woolhead Sculpins and Muddler Minnows will work as smolt imitations, and few patterns are more effective than Zonkers in silver, olive, and white.

However, an array of patterns facilitates an important versatility in approach. While the Zonker works well, it is flashy and heavy regardless of color or size, limiting how it can be fished. A box of smolt patterns that vary in size, shape, color, profile, and density, will allow you fish the flies at a variety of speeds and depths.

The three smolt patterns shown here embody different tying principles and cater to different fishing conditions.

The Clender Smolt is designed for fishing just under the surface. The Soft-tex body reduces the fly's density, which prevents the fly from sinking too deeply between pauses.

The colors and the Polar Aire of the Blue Smolt provide a slightly darker profile, best suited for bright conditions when the Clender Smolt would simply be too flashy.

The Umpqua Smolt is bulkier and provides a deeper profile. Its grizzly hackle sides match the dark parr marks that dot the sides of the natural. When smallmouth get picky about their smolts, this is my go-to fly.

Tactics

Regardless what techniques you prefer for springtime smallmouth, having an extra rod rigged with a smolt imitation close at hand will reap rewards every time a smolt-chaser appears at the surface. Like a striped bass angler, cast just ahead of the leaping baitfish, strip quickly, and let the bass hook itself on the strike.

Smolt patterns should be fished where smolts prefer to rest: current seams, structure, and boulders. I like to fish mine on a slow sink-tip, so that the fly is just under the surface. Often a waking retrieve-with the fly just bumping along the surface film-can be deadly.

Late-Summer Encore

Smolt patterns find a new constituency in late summer and early fall when stillwater trout turn to baitfish for a major chunk of their diets. These smolt patterns double as excellent imitations of coarse fish fry (whitefish, chub, shiners) many of which are weakened or killed by diseases in their first summer. The smolt patterns also make for effective imitations of fingerling trout that venture out of their nursery streams by late summer.

Patterns

Clender Smolt
Blue Smolt
Umpqua Smolt

Jeff Morgan has written many articles for Westfly, mostly on entomology and fly tying. He is the author of An Angler's Guide to the Oregon Cascades and Small Stream Fly Fishing. Jeff is currently a graduate student at Stanford University, where he is finishing his PhD in History.

Uploaded 04/01/2004.

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Clender Smolt

Blue Smolt

Umpqua Smolt