A large number of adult damselflies are buzzing over the rivers. Smallmouth jump from the stream to actually catch them. The bass are amazingly effective in capturing those within a foot of the surface.
When I spot a bass jumping in this manner, I cast a Murray’s Bass Damselfly Dry down and across stream so it lands ten feet upstream from the bass. Then I extend the fly rod up and out over the river at a forty five degree angle and remove all of the slack with my line hand. Using a stiff rod hand motion, I dance my damselfly in two foot long burst over the area I saw the bass jump. In many cases the bass hit my fly right away.
If I do not see many bass jumping to catch the damselflies in the air, I use this fly skating technique to fish the deep cuts between the ledges and in the tails of the pools. It is very rewarding to see how many bass you can catch just covering the water.
The damselfly nymphs appear to be very small and fragile. However, around brush piles and downfalls in the river there can be great numbers of the nymphs. One angler in our smallmouth fly fishing school had a very large bass follow several different flies but would not take any of them. He went up the river and crossed at a shallow riffle and snuck down the bank to the bass’es location and caught him on his first cast with a damselfly nymph.