Switching It Up for Smallies

Get your fall smallmouth fix with a switch rod.

By Tyler Hicks

When you step into a North 40 fly shop, it feels like a home away from home. Warm wooden walls are adorned with a multitude of feathers and fur, perhaps a large photograph of an angler standing alone in the river mid-backcast, and the fresh aroma of hot coffee invites you to stop and stay a while.

However, lurking outside, usually in close proximity, under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights you will find a less evolved beast.. . . . gear fisherman. That's me; I find beauty in a line counter reel, obsess over tape patterns on kokanee dodgers, and prefer the smell of a cup of fresh worms over coffee, most mornings. My boss calls us "chum flingers,” to which I counter, “At least I'm no fluff chucker!” But the truth is I appreciate all forms of fishing and have long been, as the fly-fishing comedian Hank Patterson would put it, fly curious.

What's a Dill Pickle for bass look like? 

So I decided to put away the spinning reels, senkos, and crankbaits and dust off my 4-weight switch rod to answer a simple question. If a chum flinger could chuck fluff, how many smallmouth could he pluck (from the river), not accounting for luck?

A 4-weight might seem a little light for bass but the longer length of Echo's glass switch rod, combined with the expectation of bass in the 8-14”range, makes it a suitable choice. For flies, I brought a variety of streamers, including a half dozen "bloody guts" equalizer flies I had tied up using 1/0 wide gap hooks from Trapper Tackle. I had heavily epoxied the red sparkle-wrapped weighted bellies of these flies allowing them to skitter along the bottom like a smolt or crayfish.

Shop for these Trapper Tackle Hooks here.

The work whistle sounded and I rushed down to the river. The telltale signs of fall surrounded me as I walked along the dusty trail shaded by cottonwoods growing along the Okanogan River. Flocks of northern flickers squeaked like dog-chew toys in the canopy, sumac and poison oak blazed red, and monarch butterflies drifted lazily in the breeze, right along the riverbanks on their multi-generational migration south to California.

I found a nice backeddy and tried swinging the fly along the seam that fed the froth covered pool, but found no takers. Farther downstream the river widened before smashing into a cut bank laden with downfall, which slowed into a deep pool decorated with the skeleton of some ancient cottonwood that had fallen into the river years ago. I shot the fly into the shallow riffle feeding the deep pool, and as soon as it fell into the murky depths a 12-inch smallmouth rose to smash it. While fighting the fish several other smallmouth could be seen trying to steal the meal held in its mouth.

Here is a selection of our fly rods we offer in the shop.

My experience with smallmouth on the Okanogan is that they are either present in great numbers or totally absent from most parts of the river. Once you find them you can usually pulp to a dozen fish from the same spot. I continued to work the pool, pulling out another half-dozen fish up to 12 inches before exhausting the supply.

The sun had dipped below the Cascades and the evening chill settled on the river. I moved downstream working a cobble filled run, but didn’t find any takers. In the tailout another 100 yards downstream, surface swirls betrayed the location of two boulders in the slow moving current. I targeted the nearest and pulled out a small bass. I swung the equalizer over the second boulder and was disappointed when nothing happened. I started to strip the fly back when a bass slammed the fly. The fish went aerial numerous times before I landed it.

With my daily intake of fish satisfied, and my stomach not so satiated, I headed back to car. The answer to the original question was eight smallmouth bass. Numerous rivers throughout the North 40 region are conducive to fly fishing for bass if you want to try swinging streamers for these bronzebacks. Some of the best include: the Okanogan, Yakima, Snake, Clark Fork, Missouri, and Yellowstone rivers. Give these streams a shot before the sun sets on the opportunity to target these hard-fighting fish.