Drinking from the Hydrant

[Ingraham]

Hi guys,
I’m new to fishing but after I started I got hooked with the obsession! Last spring I took my two pontoon boats with a buddy down a small river and ended up landing over 50 smallmouth (catch and release). Needless to say I fell in love with smallmouth fishing and have been going at least weekly all spring and summer long looking for new places to fish and trying to learn all the lingo, gear, and rigging. Not growing up fishing it has been like drinking from a fire hydrant but you all have helped very much as I read through many of the post looking for tips, techniques and reports.

My tackle arsenal is extremely small, mostly because the world of bass gear is freaking intimidating:crazy:! Having caught nearly all my fish on a few crank baits I have done very well but haven’t ventured out much on new rigging and tackle. In addition to learning from you all I am looking for a really good comprehensive web page or book so that I can start to build the knowledge of tackle, rigging, and fishing in general for smallies. I’m especially interested in stuff prapriatary to small stream smallmouth fishing because it works good for my pontoons and quick bank fishing after work or after dinner, or whenever I can get out! Do you have any suggestions, thoughts or questions?

Thanks for the help thus far and in the future!

[BuKuBass]

PM Sent

[Hunt'nFish]

Great! Glad you are having fun....that's what is most important.

Personally I recommend you bone up on the differant ways of rigging differant plastics. They are cheap and well suited to small stream smallie fishing. Tubes, lizards and senko's rigged various ways can pretty much keep me busy all day long.
Don't get me wrong, I love my cranks and spinnerbaits too.....but but I fish plastics 90% of the time.
Hunt'nFish

Here is a simple search on "rigging": http://www.ifish.net/board/search.php?searchid=543285

[Ingraham]

Thanks Hunt’nFish and yes indeed I’m having fun! Nice to see the Albacore picture by the way… I just went last week and had a BLAST! We went out of Westport and landed 61 Tuna!

[Hunt'nFish]

:cheers: Terrible things they are. ...wink, wink.
Nothing like casting swimbaits to jumpers!!!! OH YEAH!

But I have to admit the fuel bill on the smallies is MUCH easier on the wallet.
Hunt'nFish

[Jade Monkey]

:cheers: Terrible things they are. ...wink, wink.
Nothing like casting swimbaits to jumpers!!!! OH YEAH!

But I have to admit the fuel bill on the smallies is MUCH easier on the wallet.
Hunt'nFish
I want tuna.... never been !!!:food::food::meme::meme:

[Ingraham]

I actually did a Charter our of Westport Washington and it is one of the few areas they will do live bait. It sort of felt like cheating as the little anchovies on the end of the hook swam down for dear life just to end up in the mouth of a hungry tuna but boy was bringing those fish in FUN!!! It was weird because you would let the line free spool for 10 seconds as the tuna ran off with your little bait until you flipped it in gear and the game began. The only frustrating thing with the charter was having people who had no idea how to fish from a big boat like that and kept letting their fish get wrapped around other people with fish on. I wanted to throw these two ladies off the boat! No offense against women but it happened to be two women that made everyone else so mad one guy asked them to quit fishing because they were causing us to loose more fish than they were landing, which wasn't very many. It is the most fun I've ever had fishing however and would recommend it to anyone.

Thanks BuKuBass by the way for the great links on rigging and fishing soft plastics for small mouth. After an evening on the pudding river the other night and catching 23 little guys with crank baits I'm ready to to head to Fsherman's Marine or Sportsman's to stock up on some new plastics which I'm hoping will start bringing in larger fish, assuming they have moved back in the Molalla and Pudding. Don't get me wrong, the little guys are still fun on an ultra light rod but I want to start landing some big boys. It's nice living in Canby and having so many good Small Mouth Honey holes within 5 minutes of your house! This fall should be great fishing!

[BuKuBass]

Ingraham:
My pleasure. Check out the forum as well; most of the guys know their stuff. Oh and get yourself a stronger rod. Someday soon you'll encounter a smallie that will make you think that you're using a willow switch to fight a grizzly bear. It's not fair, and in many cases, injurious to the bass, to take a long time to bring it to hand. PM me for some recommendations.

[Ingraham]

Ingraham:
My pleasure. Check out the forum as well; most of the guys know their stuff. Oh and get yourself a stronger rod. Someday soon you'll encounter a smallie that will make you think that you're using a willow switch to fight a grizzly bear. It's not fair, and in many cases, injurious to the bass, to take a long time to bring it to hand. PM me for some recommendations.

I actually was just using the ultra light because I knew I was going to catch small fish. My normal rod is a St. croix Sport Triumph 7’ medium power fast action SCii graphite baitcast. I also have a Fenwick 6.5 fast action IM7 spinning and a Berkley Cherrywood spinning which are my backups. I normally use the last two for trout but they have caught a good handful of smallies as well.

[fishinmusician]

Fly fishing works great in small streams for smallies....If you haven't tried it you should. You don't need fancy tackle. Just a 6 or 7 weight rod, a floating line and some poppers or hoppers. If they don't work try woolly buggers. It's a ball.

[BuKuBass]

The Triumph series are great rods for the money.

[Ingraham]

After all the hours of reading, researching and chatting with a few of you on what gear I would need for my new obsession of Smallie fishing I finally went out and made my big purchase today which greatly increased my bass gear from the simple two crank baits I had been catching all my smallies with thus far. After work I swung by the pudding for about 45 minutes where I have caught tons of little guys and ended up landing 2 3#ers (which by far were the biggest fish I have pulled from that little river) and I didn't hook a single tiny guy! I'm excited to start catching bigger fish thanks to the so many good advice in the archives of this chat group! Next time I will get photos but this time I was trying to figure out my new little scale and wanted to get those guys back in the water asap. Its sort of hard to get the photo when you are alone anyway.

[Hunt'nFish]

Congrats on the bigger fish. There are no excuses for the NO pic thing though. :laugh:
Keep it up,
Hunt'nFish

[Ingraham]

Congrats on the bigger fish. There are no excuses for the NO pic thing though. :laugh:
Keep it up,
Hunt'nFish

I know... Yea I gotta get the picture! I just need to figure out how to hold the fish, weigh it, grab the camera phone and snap a shot all by myself without keeping the fish out of the water to long! I so ecstatic about finally catching big fish I can hardly think straight as is when I see the monster in the water for the first time... But hey, theres worse things in life right:)