Fly fishing for Smallmouth Bass in the western cape- Sean Mills

 

One of the advantages of living in the Western Cape is the fact that it is home to one of the hardest fighting freshwater game fishes in South Africa. Now that sounds like a mouthful, but really, if you haven’t caught a smallmouth bass on fly, you will probably want to dispute that. Talk to anyone who has tangled with a 500 gram smallmouth on a fly rod and you will soon see what I am talking about. A 1 kilogram smallie is strong, a 1.5 kg smallie is awesome and a 2 kg river smallie is just plain scary!

A few years ago, I took a fulltime smallmouth bass guide from the States by the name of Jeff Keble fly fishing. Jeff guides on average 4 days a week for bronze backs on his home waters in the States and hardly fishes for trout. I took him to the upper reaches of the Breede river when it was low and very clear and we spent a very interesting day wading upstream and casting a range of different smallmouth flies, both his (American patterns) and my own. He landed an 18 inch smallie and lost another big fish as well as landing a few half pounders and bigger. At the end of the day he mentioned to me that he was really chuffed to have caught an African smallie and then said that he reckoned that the Breede in his book was World class! I have never forgotten his words and have always enjoyed fishing for smallies.

It was interesting spending a day with Jeff, he was very pleasant company and very unlike your typical vision of a loud mouth American. He was very down to earth, knowledgeable and soft spoken. While walking through the river, he was constantly scanning the water for crawfish and asked me where they where. I told him that we did not have any in Africa and instead had fresh water crabs. He was dumbfounded and thought I was joking. Just then he spotted a reddish brown fresh water crab walking side ways through the water and almost lost his footing he was so taken aback. Many of the most successful American smallmouth bass patterns are designed to look like crawfish (American crayfish) which is typically the fish’s favourite food. I had a look through Jeff’s box and found quite a few unusual patterns including a fly that looks like a bass fishing “fluke” plastic lure, but made from the trimming around a pillow for the tail and a type of dense dubbing brush for the head as well as a representation of a jig with crawfish type pincers and rubber legs and his favourite pattern for smallmouth’s, a Cicada dry fly made from neoprene wet suite material and rubber legs!

My box in contrast was filled with clouser minnows, flash clousers, woollhead mullets, big Mrs. Simpson’s (some of which he took back with him to the states), poppers, Dahlberg divers, big woolly buggers, deer hair mouse flies and fritz lures. He asked me if I had had much success with the flash clouser and I told him that it was one of my most successful in silver and blue. He told me that they had not really had much success with overly flashy patterns on their rivers, which was interesting. 

What I really like about fishing for river smallmouth bass is that it is a bit like fishing the Seychelles, a bit like fishing for salmon in a big river and also a little like fishing a mangrove island in the Florida Keys. Smallies like different habitats that are a little like these three destinations. They like flats when they are hunting or spawning, holding below and in rapids like salmon and you may need a sinking line to get down in the fast water and they also like holding in structure like trees and bushes and undercuts right next to the bank like a mangrove jack would. This makes for very interesting and varied fishing.

I remember fishing a section of the Breede a few years ago where it is about 80 meters wide and shelves gradually from shallow to a deep area where the river flowed on the opposite bank. You could wade for 50 meters and be knee deep, and then make a 30 meter cast with a shooting head to the far bank with a flash clouser on and let it swing with the current. As soon as it had swung around, you stripped twice and where usually into a hard fighting smallie any where between 700 grams to 1.7 kilograms, which had you sweating on an 8 weight rod! Smallies can often jump over a meter or more into the air and move much quicker than a large mouth and they just don’t quit. I landed 33 smallmouth from that stretch of river in one day and my wrist was sore for days from trying to hold them away from cover. Fortunately, a smallmouth will not run very far and the most line that I have had one take was about 30 meters, but can they pull.

Recently I fished a section of the Breede near Worcester that has several long rapids which dump into long pools. The smallmouth would collect just bellow the rapids waiting for bait fish to be washed over the lip. I would wade into the rapid and cast a black and chartreuse fritz lure on a sink tip line slightly to the side of where the fast water was and let the fly get pulled in. I would then start a medium strip back up to the lip of the rapid. Often it would not make it that far and a lovely smallmouth would come somersaulting out the water and the fight would be on! For this type of fishing, a specialized line like the Jim Teeny T series or mini tip lines are great because the front half sinks fast, but the rear part floats which allow you to stay in contact and even mend the line if needed. This is a great advantage over full sinking lines. The other advantage is that Jim Teeny lines have no memory and therefore tangle less often!

I also fished a section of river where the smallies where spawning on a gravel and sand flat about 100 meters long and you had to wade softly and could cast to sighted fish, that was great fun! Some of the most spectacular takes that I had with a smallmouth was fishing a deer hair mouse pattern through a deep run. The bass would literally take the fly by jumping out of the water!

I have always been looking for that Holy Grail of smallie fishing, a 20 incher. This in American terms is a real trophy fish in a river. In spring, while the river was quite full, I went looking for Mongo on the Breede. It was a nice relatively wind free day and I waded into position and started fan casting with a chocolate brown marabou leech into a nice drop off, off a rapid surrounded by fallen trees. I was using a 6 weight rod and soon started hooking and landing 15 to 17 inch smallies that all pulled very hard! There where also a few mirror carp that made an appearance from time to time. Then on one particular strip, I noticed a large brown shape shadowing my fly. I knew at once that this was a large smallmouth, and possibly even a “Mongo” one at that. I recast and high stick nymphed the fly deeper through the run and felt the fish slam onto my fly. The take was felt right down my rod and I set the hook hard, twice. The fight was on in a big way and I tried to play the fish as hard as possible realizing that there where trees in the water on either side of me, and smallmouth bass are not the cleanest of fighters, in fact they are more like street fighters employing lots of dirty tricks to get away. After a very hard tussle lasting about 5 minuets, the smallie veered to the left and ploughed into the submerged branches of a felled tree and I could feel my line stuck fast.

I loosened the drag on my reel and backed out of the rapid and dumped my jacket, wallet, keys etc on the side of the river and ploughed back down to where the fish was still swimming in the branches. The tree was in about 1.2 meters of water and I swam into it to free my 8 pound Maxima tippet and by some miracle I managed to grab the lip of the bass and haul it out. I could feel that I was very heavy and I made my way to the bank with my prize. I got my camera out, set the self timer to ten seconds and started taking some snap shots of my big fish. It measure exactly 20 inches and I was ecstatic! She was in the peak of condition and full of eggs and felt very heavy, but I did not weigh her but gently revived the great smallie and released it to its watery home and said a prayer of thank you. 

I went back on the 18th of October, my Birthday to look for Mongos mother on the same stretch of river. The fishing was very tough this time around but I eventually latched onto a 15 incher on a chart and black fritz lure and then caught 3 more from 15 to 18 inches in quick succession after having blanked for two hours! I approached a very deep and dark looking pool which was ringed by papyrus and just screamed mongo country! I set up my digital camera to take a video clip and started casting my #1 chart and black fritz lure into the deep dark depths of the pool and let it sink down and then started fishing it back. Nothing on the first cast so I recast a bit further out using my Monic clear floater and let the fly sink right next to the papyrus. On the third strip, every thing went solid and I struck three times into a very heavy fish! It jumped 7 times and through the fly right back at me all in about 10 seconds! I new that I had been taught a lesson!  I just love the Western Cape and her hard fighting Bronzebacks!