Bass in Shade

The best smallmouth flyfishing at this time of the year is often found in the shady parts of the rivers. An easy way to master this is to carefully choose the areas you fish. For example, I arrived on the North Fork of the Shenandoah River about 5 pm several days ago and the sun was still bright on the part of the river I wanted to fish as the river flowed straight east. However, 50 yards downstream the river made a very sharp turn north. This put that whole part of the river in the shade so I moved down to that part of the river and the fishing was outstanding. If you don’t know the river well you are planning to fish you can easily see these stretches on the topo maps as well.