This heat wave significantly elevated river temperatures.  It’s just not prudent to target trout in local streams when the water is low and air temps are in the nineties.  I was supposed to fish and show a friend local trout options for Irondequoit Creek.  Instead, I suggested smallmouth bass on a local, warm water creek.  Smallmouth surface action can really heat up during the warmth of summer.  Besides, bass are much more temperature tolerant over trout.  There are a handful of reputable smallmouth waters around Rochester (Oak Orchard/Sandy/Black Creek/Genny/Mill/4 Mile/Salmon/Honeoye Outlet/Canandaigua Outlet) -just to provide a few places to start.

The temperature was still pushing 90, humid and it was perfect for wet wading.  We hiked to the first hole and I tied on a chartruese deer hair slider, while Jessie tied on a brown crayfish streamer.  On my second cast, a fiesty smallmouth jumped on the chugging slider.  From then on, it was top water time.  Over the next three hours, we landed 12 to 15 aggressive smallmouth bass on top water divers, sliders and poppers.  Great fun to wet wade, tease the fly over promising bass water and anticipate a strike!  It’s funny how some of the smaller bass make the most explosive strikes.  Twitching, stripping hard, popping, slow retrieves, etc all produces strikes.  The deeper holes produced several fish, while the shallow stretches produced zero strikes.  It wasn’t uncommon to walk a hundred yards or more between promising fishing spots.   It was enjoyable to leap frog fishing holes, share techniques and laugh when one of us missed  a strike.  I’m certainly looking forward to my next top water adventure and aim to tie a few more deer hair sliders before now and then.