ITT we expose our Basses

Is Ackourey still in business, or are those old ties?

I have been down there and this Ephoron Leukon hatch has been going on for at least 10 days at this point, we are talking hundreds of millions of flies. Just walls of flies, bank to bank, 100 yards wide for miles and miles. The channels are gorging once the surface is at about 20 flies per square foot. The cats first appear by sound, they all clamp their jaws and you hear it ,then you see dorsals, and you can hit them with a flashlight and see their stomachs.

I have some hog smallmouth on camera, one is 20 flat, real thick, need to edit the cursing, lol.

I need to find a flat water spot near deeper water since the river dropped. They have vacated my area. They were all slabs though, they only seem to be taking flies in my area, nobody with topwater was breaking 17 inches, but the real hogs over that were on flies. These are smart old fish that wait for this and gorge. The river sounds amazing at about 10pm, once the cats and walleye, bass, and musky are tearing into suckers, carp, and fallfish that are sipping these flies.

It is hard to get them after a critical mass point, but not impossible all nights. A few nights it was pointless at least for just increased sizes of the fly tactic, even like a 2, there was no point unless you sight fished a channel cat dorsal and threw it in his face.

There are definitely dead areas where you don't see any rises and other areas where there are bass coming up, but you have to first see if they are bass or channels.
 
Joe Ackourey no longer has the shop but he still guides and sells flys. I really miss the shop. His Deer Hair Moth pattern is the one I've been using and having success with. I think the best times are early on in the hatch when the water is not absolutely covered with them and after it slows down, the fish get active right at sunset and give themselves away with rises. I cast to the rises and after 20 or so drifts I might get a take.

Another 17 incher tonight, was more than a match for my 6wt. I finally beached him, caught just before sunset and I got to see him slurp up the fly

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Some video I took while having a stand still fight with the fish
battle with smallie

Joe Ackourey's Deer Hair Moth, the one on the right was half eaten by the big smallie, they look yellow because of the lighting, they are white

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HD,

Great post, thanks for sharing the fly. I've always wanted to fish the whitefly hatch for smallies. We don't have a whitefly hatch where I am. When I catch smallies on the surface its on poppers. I might tie up the moth pattern and give it a shot to see if it peaks the interest of my local smallies, even if there is no whitefly hatch.
 
boychick wrote:
HD,

Great post, thanks for sharing the fly. I've always wanted to fish the whitefly hatch for smallies. We don't have a whitefly hatch where I am. When I catch smallies on the surface its on poppers. I might tie up the moth pattern and give it a shot to see if it peaks the interest of my local smallies, even if there is no whitefly hatch.

A white popper works wonders
 
Hey what about dragonflies? Do bass eat them beehotches? I see a lot of them over the bass waters I fish, and I see big bass becoming air born at times, but I can never tell if they're going after the dragonflies or some other unseen bug.
 
Yes. They eat dragonflies. Or at least try to. One pushed my dragonfly a foot with the body splayed across his mouth, unable to fall in and gain purchase. So tie them soft, maybe, so the fsh can clamp down on it.
 
The_Sasquatch wrote:
Hey what about dragonflies? Do bass eat them beehotches? I see a lot of them over the bass waters I fish, and I see big bass becoming air born at times, but I can never tell if they're going after the dragonflies or some other unseen bug.

Oh yeah, they will launch on dragons in mid-day a lot of the time. I remember vividly just floating a stretch of river once, not having a fly rod, and seeing 4-5 pound hogs just catapulting themselves after dragons.

These were the biggest fish again, just like the white fly hatch, and that day you caught nothing near the size of the fish we saw flying out of the water even on good bait-hellgrammites and stonecats. Once these bass hit 18, 19, 20, 21 they really become masters at switching on the easiest food source. These 18 to 20 inch fish I was catching were in this weird pocket every night at exactly the same time, almost down to the minute when the flies reached a good blanket on the water, then they start rising. Pretty wild.
 
My biggest of the year caught last week on a big black popper. Went +18".
 

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Hey Jake, eat a sammich!
 
I eat everything in site.

Lost 80 lbs. I have a very physical job.

I was found nom nom nom...ing on that bass minutes later. Sorry to say. Needed energy for job.

Bass was caught on the Yellow Muddy Conodowissonpocostoga River in PA.

It flows through Yorcumberlankadam County.
 
First topwater eat of the year.

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smallie from the upper Allegheny river - caught on a foxy minnow on a recent float trip

she measured just a bit over 16" and pulled like a truck
 

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Teaching a buddy to fly fish tonight at a pretty large private lake. Never fished it before and hoping to have some pictures to add to this thread.
 
jay348 wrote:
First topwater eat of the year.

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Nice fly Jay did you tie it ?
 
Hope I didn't disappoint. Only fish I caught as I was teaching for a while.

Roughly about 18.5" estimating in the 4-4.5lbs range

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good stuff ry...hefty fish for sure!

Fredrick wrote:

Nice fly Jay did you tie it ?

yessir...little deer hair frog slider thing
 
Landed on a gem of a trout stream. 19 inches. Largest one I have ever put in the net. This guy has been loading up on wild brown trout.
 

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SBecker wrote:
Landed on a gem of a trout stream. 19 inches. Largest one I have ever put in the net. This guy has been loading up on wild brown trout.

Nice. So were you targeting smallmouth on this trout stream or was he an "accidental" catch? Did you catch him on some type of streamer? Baby brown trout?
 
It was an accidental on purpose catch. Went there for trout and saw him.
 
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