Hello fellow anglers,

I live in Alexandria, VA and enjoy fishing the Potomac for smallmouth and stripers in the Bay. I have a 21 foot Boston Whaler and a kayak and try to get it out as much as I can. Unfortunately, the high fuel cost is limiting my time in the boat so I'm finding myself spending more time in the kayak or wade fishing.

I've fly fished some but mostly in the saltwater environment. When I fish for smallmouth I like using my spinning rod and often use live bait or various soft and hard lures. My buddy has encouraged me to try the fly rod for smallmouth but I seem to catch larger smallies using live bait versus the fly but if anyone has any reccomendations on what I might do to improve the quality of catch I would be very interested in hearing what you have to say.

That's all for now but I'll look forward to getting to know some of you here on this board.

Fishfool

Welcome Fishfool -

Glad to have you with us! We have a number of members from the Metro DC area and look forward to making your acquaintance in person!

If you want to catch large smallmouth using the flyrod I'd reccomend fishing a little deeper in the water column so a sinktip or intermediate line might be useful in that regard. Also, you should consider using the following flies which I've found to be effective: Madtom pattern, Murray's Helgammite, Shenks White Minnow, CK Baitfish, various Crawfish patterns, RH Flasher, Hickey's Condor (Dry), San Antonio Worm, Walt's Poppers (Carolina Blue, etc), etc.

Good luck and hope to see you on the water!

Tightlines,

Castaway
Edited by Castaway on Apr 18, 2008 at 11:20 PM