FATC Smallmouth Bass Trip Report
Brian Ellis
I’m joined FATC last November (Brian Ellis). Other than participating in the virtual Charity Dinner and Kenny’s Euro Style Nymphing Zoom class, I haven’t had much of an opportunity to participate in the fellowship. As a means of introducing myself, I thought that I would submit a trip report and some photographs from a smallmouth bass excursion that I took to Western New York State back during the 2nd week of May.
I have been fly fishing in earnest since first attending University of Missouri-Rolla in 1977. It was wonderful discovering all the beautiful trout and smallmouth bass streams in close proximity to the college. I’ve since fly fished all over United States and abroad in Europe and as far away Christmas Island in the Pacific. I became a FFF Certified Master Fly Casting Instructor twenty years ago and I’ve been blessed to have met many new friends during my journeys as a Casting Instructor.
Although I’ve done quite a lot of fly fishing during 2020, because of Covid, all of my trips have been locally in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks, and all of them have been by myself or with my wife Diane. I was really anxious to get on an airplane and fish some distance waters with a friend once I became fully vaccinated. I received my 2nd Pfizer shot on April 30th of this year and three weeks later I was on a plane to Buffalo, NY for this smallmouth trip with my friend Mike that lives there.
Diane is from Buffalo and I first fished with Mike, while visiting my her family, back in the winter of 1999 when I caught my first steelhead trout from one of the Lake Ontario Tributaries. Since then I’ve made numerous spring and fall trips there to fish for steelhead, salmon, trout, and smallmouth bass in both the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario tributaries.
Unfortunately Mike was recovering from neck surgery and was unable to cast or to fish but he insisted that the hikes to the many Lake Erie tributary streams with me on the trip was doing him a world of good. He was also enjoying taking numerous photographs of me with fish from the trip and I included a few.
In Missouri, I mostly fly fish for trout but I always have had a keen fondness for smallmouth bass. Being a wild native fish with many miles of uncrowded smallmouth streams in the Missouri Ozarks to explore has always been appealing to me. Most of the trips, over the years, to fish Great Lake Tributary streams have be in pursuit of Steelhead Trout but lately, for my spring trips, I’ve selected to travel a little bit later to target smallmouth bass. The bass usually start arriving in the tributary streams to spawn about the end of April after most of the Steelhead have completed spawning and have returned to the lakes. I try to time my bass trips in early May after the bass have entered the streams but before they start spawning, which is usually the latter half of May. The first bass that enter the tributaries seem to be the larger fish followed by subsequently smaller and smaller runs of bass. Harvest of smallmouth bass is not permitted until June 1st in NY State. I don’t enjoy fishing for smallmouth while they are on their spawning beds. Years ago I had a sickening experience when I discovered a large female smallmouth sitting on a spawning bed while I was fishing the Jacks Fork River here in Missouri. I casted a large gaudy marabou fly onto the bed and when the fish picked-up the offering to remove it from the bed, I struck, hooked, and landed the fish. While playing the fish, I noticed dozens on long-eared sunfish had swarmed onto the bed, and they were all rapidly beating their tails to push their noses into the bed of the gravel to gobble up as many of the fish eggs as possible while the nest was unguarded. Since then, I have had no desire to cast to fish while they are on their spawning beds.
In the Great Lakes, smallmouth bass successfully spawn in many of the shallower areas of the lake. Biologists are not certain why many of the other bass journey up the tributaries to spawn but I’m sure glad that many of them do. When the fish first enter the tributaries they feed ravenously and readily attack streamer patterns. After the fish have been caught, many of them wise up and become more challenging.
I especially enjoy the visual aspects of fishing crystal clear water in these small streams. Using a 6wt fly rod with a floating fly line, it is a thrill to swim a marabou streamer along-side boulders, logs and rock ledges, and witness a large bass burst out from his lair and confidently smash my fly.
It is astonishing to see the numbers of large bass that enter these small creeks. Please take a look at my photographs of two different angles of the numerous bass holding in one of the pools. Often, you can see many of the bass but it is unusual to see so many exposed in the middle of a pool such as this one. There were over 100 bass in this pool (many didn’t fit in the frame) and all of these bass were between 14 and 21 inches long. I caught many of these bass from this pool that morning. Mike and I went to the car for lunch and when we returned all but about twenty of the bass had left. They most likely went farther upstream on their quest to spawn. That is often how it is fishing these tributary streams; the fish are here one day and gone the next and you need to keep searching for them.
There are many Lake Erie Tributary streams from Buffalo NY, through Erie PA, and on to Cleveland OH, that I have fished over the years and they can all be good. In general the bigger streams receive runs of larger fish. My favorite Lake Erie Tributary stream is Cattaraugus Creek around Gowanda, NY. However, on this trip the Cattaraugus was high and off color so we stuck to the smaller creeks. During my 3 and a half day trip I fished five different creeks. We kept moving from creek to creek and rotating from section to section and it all seems a blur to me now. One of the most refreshing things about this 3 and a half day drip is that we didn’t see any other fisherman the whole trip and I only fished public waters open to everybody. It is not often that one is able to say that.
This was very enjoyable trip and I am pleased that I caught several respectable smallmouth. However, I have vivid images of a couple colossal smallmouth bass that I unsuccessfully tempted with my flies and those visions haunt me still!
Best regards,
–Brian Ellis
