By matching the minnows the smallmouth bass feed upon, you can get some excellent fly fishing. For many years serious trout anglers have always “matched the hatch” for their native brook trout fishing. This is such a successful tactic that for many years I’ve applied it to my smallmouth bass fishing.
I’m very fortunate to have grown up in Edinburg, Virginia right on the bank of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River. From spring to fall I fished almost every day. My favorite baits were the minnows which I caught in the North Fork of the Shenandoah River and Stoney Creek. When I wanted to use a specific minnow for my smallmouth fishing I knew exactly where to go to seine them or catch them on a small worm-baited hook using a cane pole.
After graduating from the School of Pharmacy at MCV in Richmond, I became interested in fly tying. I decided to tie flies which matched the minnows I had caught my smallmouth on as a youngster.
Madtoms
The first minnow I tried to duplicate in my fly tying was the madtom because I had caught many bass on the real minnows, which the river is full of. Today we know this fly as the Murray’s Madtom Sculpin. My friend and I would seine the madtoms using a six foot wide seine held between 2 six foot poles. Each of us holding a pole, we would start in the tail of the pools just as it was getting dark. Wading upstream in hip deep water we would catch so many madtoms that we quickly filled our minnow bucket.
Today, these are the areas I fish my Murray’s Madtom Sculpin at dusk by using a slow line-hand stripping action to swim it just above the stream bottom.
Since the shape of the sculpin minnow is much like that of the madtom minnow, I use this same fly to fish where I know there are many sculpin minnows. All of the bait fishermen around Edinburg called these “spring minnows”. It was many years later before the name sculpin minnow was used in the Shenandoah Valley. Actually the name “spring minnow” is a quick give away which reveals where and how to fish my fly. These sculpins like the clean pure water which flows into the river from the springs. There are large populations of these minnows around the cobblestones where springs are found. I fish my Murray’s Madtom Sculpin across stream below the riffles and where feeder streams enter the river. READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE>>>
Or if you prefer, watch my video on Smallmouth Bass Minnow Matching.