My Top Smallmouth Flies

In light of the past few posts about fly fishing for smallmouth bass, here is some information outlining my favorite subsurface patterns.  One of the great things about smallmouth is that they are often aggressive, opportunistic feeders. This means that you don’t have to have an extensive or complicated fly selection to be effective.  The majority of my time on the river I find success with one of these two flies. 

1. The Clouser Deep Minnow

Without a doubt, this is the streamer I fish most often.  Nearly every time I’m after smallmouth in rivers or streams, I use this fly.  The Clouser Minnow can be tied in a variety of color combinations to imitate various baitfish. Olive over tan is what I have the most success with.  This is a great imitation of either a sculpin or a fleeing crayfish and I catch fish throughout the entire season with it. 

During times when I encounter muddy, off color water, brighter colors are necessary to increase visibility to the fish. Yellow and red (reminiscent of the historic Mickey Finn streamer) and Yellow over Chartreuse are my first choices when rain has the rivers running high and off-color.

 

2. Marter’s Crayfish

There are many crayfish patterns out there and I’m sure most will work. This is the pattern I use when fish are keying on crayfish and I have a personal affinity to it since it’s one I developed.  

I can’t remember what year I developed this pattern but I know I was in high school.  My favorite place to fish at the time was, and still is, the Juniata River for smallmouth bass.  On the Juniata, my favorite lures with spinning gear were the Rebel Crawfish and the soft plastic tube. Both these lures represent a crayfish.  With this knowledge, I set off on a fly tying quest to develop a crayfish pattern. After a bit of trial an error, I developed the fly pictured here which I simply call Marter’s Crayfish. It’s relatively easy to tie and works great when dead-drifted under a strike indicator.