I took my own advice in 2017 and did some serious traveling, which included seeking out new bronzeback adventures. During August, Lyn and I headed west across the rolling Dakota prairies and into the trout country of the mountain West. But nary a trout was caught. Instead, my angling goal was Western smallmouth in various […]
Archive | Fly Fishing Travel
2018 New Years Resolution: Fish More !
Your New Year’s resolution for 2018 should be to fish more. I’ll tell you why, and also how to make this happen. First of all, why. That’s easy, fishing is good for you. It’s much healthier physically than many other pastimes. This is especially true for river smallmouth fishing, which requires plenty of physical effort […]
2017 Fishing Report
March: Trout Fishing- While Minnesota’s smallmouth fishing remained closed I took advantage of the mild early spring weather to do some trout fishing. Drifting tiny size 16 nymphs is certainly different than working bigger flies for hefty smallies, but on a 4-wt even the 10 and 12 inch browns still put up a good tussle. […]
Adventure Tale: Sticking With It in South Africa
BOOK EXCERPT– Baboons, desert heat and smallmouth bass. They don’t often go together, but they do in Africa. I was fried. It was November (that’s early summer in South Africa) and the sun had been relentless all day. My South African pals Conrad and Herman and I were fishing a small river on the west […]
Adventure Tale: Jungle Smallmouth
BOOK EXCERPT—- Hawaii– sun, sand beaches, sea breezes, snorkeling, palm trees and tourists everywhere, right? For that reason it was never high on my list of “must see” places… until I discovered Hawaiian jungle smallmouth. Hawaii. Sun, sand beaches, sea breezes, snorkeling, palm trees… and tourists everywhere. These jewels in the Pacific sure have plenty […]
Lake Michigan: Smallmouth on the Flats
North America’s largest bodies of water, the Great Lakes are difficult to imagine if you haven’t seen them. Like freshwater oceans, they encompass tens of millions of acres with far distant shorelines invisible to the eye. For smallie fans used to little meandering rivers, you might think a body of water like Lake Michigan sounds […]
Adventure Tale: Maine Damselfly Frenzy
BOOK EXCERPT– It was a couple summers ago. My pal Dan and I loaded up the car with a big canoe and lots of tackle and headed northeast. Though the route through Vermont was slow, it was interesting and enjoyable nevertheless. Twisting and winding thru green forested mountains and postcard-pretty small towns, it was easy […]
Why Travel for Smallmouth Bass?
Great Fishing! This probably seems like a no-brainer. But it’s true. A lot of places beyond your home waters offer truly high quality angling, with plenty of big fish and/or high numbers of smallmouth. Some may say they don’t care about fish sizes, but it’s the rare fella who doesn’t get awfully excited when they […]
Smallies in Every Direction
There are smallmouth bass in 48 states, with just Alaska and Florida the only holdouts. You can even find ’em in unlikely places like Nevada, Texas, even Hawaii … Sure, plenty of guys know that states like Pennsylvania, Virginia and Tennessee have so many bronzeback streams it’s hard to count them all. But a lot […]
Smallmouth Bass Safari — South African Angling Adventure
I’ll bet you didn’t know there were smallies in Africa. I didn’t either until two brothers from South Africa started writing to me saying they were also hard-core smallmouth fans. They invited me over to fish with them, and over the next 18 months kept sending me South African photos of big smallies and beautiful […]