Summer Bassin' on Poppers

After having some success the previous day and with knee surgery 6 days on the horizon, I jumped at the chance to do some more bass fishing with my friend Ryan this morning.  We started wading about 8:30 a.m. and were soon into lots of fish.  Ryan was using an Orvis Clearwater 865-4 and I had an Orvis Access 906-4 SW in hand.  We were both using poppers -- size #6 white for Ryan and size #4 blue for me.  It really didn't seem to matter as the fish were aggressive.

We caught lots of small largemouth bass in the  7-10 inch range.  Though small in stature, they fought and jumped like citation size bucketmouths. 
We also landed a few dozen feisty and beefy bluegills that really could put a bend in both our 5 and 6 wt rods.

The fish were lying in all suspected locations.... logjams, undercut banks,  deep runs.  It's nice when you think a fish should be in a certain spot, make the perfect cast, and are rewarded with a hookup. 

... that happened a lot today.

These bass were the first Ryan had caught on a fly rod.  It was pretty exciting watch him quickly pick up the casting and the techniques needed to hook up and land these fish.

..... as I like to do, when it was time to pack it in and call it a morning, we both had to catch a fish on our last cast. 

I saved my best for last. 

All told, we caught well over 50 fish today with about 20-25 largemouth bass between the two of us.

A Good Day!