Labor Day weekend always triggers a little stress in my life.  First and foremost, my summer fishing feels like its going away.  Its really not.  The best is yet to come with fall.  But it’s a natural instinct I can’t control.  Then there’s the approaching show season.  While the tour always goes well, the preparation is intense.

We had a steady flow of thunderstorms pass through Hayward, WI yesterday so I spent a full day reducing some of my onset stress.  I stayed home and dove into my preparations for shows.  I pulled some of this year’s best photos and soon they will be added into my presentations.  I booked a few flights.  I inventoried leftover fish art mugs.  And then finally I made a fishing plan for today.

At 6:20 AM Granny and I headed to what is becoming our favorite haunt.  We dodged a ton of turkeys along the way and a few whitetails.  This is a special place; in many ways similar to our old western favorite, the Nunya River.  It’s a beautiful and remote float where we’ve yet to see another.

We launched our Striker raft for the long adventure at 8:35 AM.  After heaps of storms and rain the last 24 hours, the river was high and off-color.  We weren’t sure that we weren’t wasting our time.  But worst scenario we’d enjoy a wilderness drift.

I took the oars first and eased my girl down the slow meandering river.  The skies were gray and with the gentle breeze it felt like a fall morning.  Both of us were underdressed but we concluded that it was better to be cold in late August than being hot getting devoured by mosquitoes and horseflies in July.

It was almost two hours in before we saw a fish.  I rarely change flies but I went from my usual white high-riding streamer to an olive popper then a chartreus Clouser.  Eventually I went to a black streamer.  A large black concoction with a few dashes of copper flash and a gold bead.  I picked this fly up about 20 years ago in Argentina for a golden dorado trip.  Black shows up good in high water especially when its off color.  Sure enough, Granny went tight and landed a smallmouth bass so fat I doubt the biggest musky in this river could eat him.

Neither of us prefer fishing a black streamer.  The reason is that its hard to see it as you strip it along, and as all fly anglers know, a lot of our fun comes from watching fish eat our flies.  After we landed our third smallie on the black fly I switched us back to white, but no luck.  We tried to force the fish to eat it but after another fishless hour, we anchored for a beer and I switched us back to black.

Returning to the dark fly was the move.  It wasn’t ten minutes back on the oars and the fish started showing up again.  I’ve rarely seen a small sized bass here.  The minimum seems to be 12” and all are fat.  This guy here needs a treadmill!  Full of crayfish, mice and frogs would be my guess.

The sun came out and the cool breeze diminished in the afternoon.  It turned into one of this summers more delightful days.  While the action remained steady, the numbers of smallies were nothing like I experienced on Monday with the boys.  We went on to land exactly nine with about half that many missed or lost.  But as I keep mentioning, the size of these fish is a treat.

Today’s highlight were three smallies that were 17 to 18”.  I know, you always hear people talk about the 20 inchers they catch.  Well, we’ve not been so fortunate for run-ins with numerous gigantic smallies.  But three like this, yeah. . . . they will do!

So I relieved some stress by getting some work done yesterday.  Now I’ve relieved more stress by getting in another day of absolutely UNBELIEVABLE smallmouth bass fishing.  No doubt, you can never have enough days like today, but no matter what, Granny and I are satisfied with summer 2024.

Jeff Currier Global Fly Fishing