Flies for smallies on the brandywine

[willdeb]

can someone tell me some good flies to use on any branch of the brandywine for smallies.

 

[PSUFishMenace]

Olive wooly bugger is all I ever use there. I'm definitely no smallie expert, so it might not be THE best fly for smallies, but it catches bass plus the other kinds of fish in there. I like sizes 8-10 with beadhead but you could go bigger if you want to cut out a lot of the sunnies. I like catching everything though.

 

[PatrickC]

Big streamers or poppers. But, that's my advice for any water this time of year

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear willdeb,

In general anything you have in your trout fly box will work for smallies particularly in larger sizes. IE if you have size 4 wooly buggers throw them instead of the size 8 or 10's. A large stonefly nymph will be eaten by a smallmouth same as it would be eaten by a trout.

If you decide you want to target smallmouth and nothing else in the stream then you do need to concentrate on somewhat larger flies. They needn't be gigantic, but size 6 and 8 flies are easily eaten by decent sized bluegills. For smallies and nothing else make size 4 your smallest fly, and don't be afraid to toss a 1/0 or 2/0.

With that in mind here are a couple "must have" smallmouth flies in size 4 to 1/0 or 2/0.

Clouser Minnow
Poppers
Sneaky Pete's or some other slider type popper
Wooly Bugger's
Zonker type flies
Crayfish, wooly buggers work as a substitute

What you want to do is cover all levels of the water column with your fly selection, topwater, mid-depth, and the bottom.

Yellow, white, black, and purple are good colors for both poppers and Clouser Minnows and Sneaky Petes.

As you get deeper in the water column you'll probably find that natural colors like tan, brown, rust, and olive work well for the crayfish and the Zonkers which can be dead drifted to represent crayfish, and eels, or leeches, or stonecats, etc.

Smallmouth can be selective on rare occasions but most of the time all that matters is putting a reasonable facsimilie of a food item in front of them at a level where they don't need to expend more energy than they will gain by eating it to prompt them to bite.

Good luck!

Tim Murphy

 

[dubthethorax]

Nice response, Tim!

For the crayfish, Try Clousers..
http://www.clouserflyfishing.com/clouscraytyi.html

 

[fadeaway263]

Since I regularly fish the WB of the Brandywine on a regular basis for smallies we have been doing well on almost any color bugger or the prince nymph. Last weekend I caught a very large smallie on a large "stonebugger" I purchased online from the "Flystop".

 

[Fredrick]

Size 8 buggers are good in black and white and chartreuse poppers size 8 and some nymphs in size 10 and 8

 

[brookiesRfun]

Whatever ya do don't do what I just spent most of the day doing...I tossed everything except a m80 and didn't catch a single smb on french creek up in nw pa. I don't know whats up. I used # 6 streamers tied to look like what is in the creek as well as various wb. I even tried hot pink....Nothing. They would chase sometimes but not bite I guess they were feeling selective today.

 

[JackM]

High pressure system prevailing up there? You need to knock on wood or rocks. Fish tend to hold tight to cover during high pressure and bright skies.