Dog days of August are a great time to visit your local warm water creek to cast topwater patterns.  I invited a friend to join me for a Huck Finn adventure of wet wading and rock hopping at Honeoye Outlet.  It’s refreshing to wet wade and explore a new portion of a stream.  The water was lown and clear.  Smallmouth were concentrated in stretches that contained greater depth.  Another way to locate these fish is to find suckers.  Smallmouth like to hang around suckers, as they stir up bait.

Despite the presence of numerous crayfish, we decided to throw larger deer hair sliders and poppers.  I think that the waking motion and ability to cover substantial water make topwater sliders ideal for summer smallmouth.  Surprisingly, topwater patterns will often out fish subsurface ones.  Our deer hair patterns out performed sub surface crayfish imitations.  Topwater is especially effective when covering large expanses of water that may or may not contain bass.  I know that when I fish a slider across the slow current of a 2′ or 3′ deep pool, the bass see/hear my fly.  Color isn’t as important, as is the waking retrieve and speed.  Sometimes they want a slow retrieve, other times they attack better on a faster, steady retrieve.

Over the course of four hours we caught fifteen smallmouth between 8″ and 13″.  We concentrated our efforts on five distinct pools, frequently catching several fish per stretch.  It was great fun to watch the strike and initial jumps of the bass.  We leaped frogged each other and gave up a primary spot after catching a fish.  It’s nice to cheer on a friend as he hooks up!  The angling highlight came when Dick hooked a better fish and he couldn’t turn it.  After several decent runs and delicately playing it on 6 lb test, he beached a beauty of a pike.  This toothy guy totally chomped on the fly and we couldn’t salvage it.  It was a very respectable creek pike and the clear top dog in that portion of the stream!  Pike are usually a surprise and anything close to thirty inches, a bonus.  This pike sure made our day and I’m looking forward to more topwater action.