Since I know smallmouth have learned how to adjust their feeding to fairly high water levels I adjust my fly fishing to their whims. I like to fish the North Fork of the Shenandoah Rive almost every evening after I close the fly shop.
When there is extra water in the river I head for those sections of the river where islands divide it flow. Often the smallest side of the divide will present an ideal water level. Not only is this easier for me to wade and fish, but I’m sure many large smallmouth bass move into these divides to feed. I’ve often caught many large bass here when the rivers are full and go back in the middle of the summer to find there was a very small flow of water and that the large bass had moved back into the main part of the river to feed. One day when fishing the New River the river was exceptionally high even though the clarity was good. The main part of the river did not produce well but by slipping in behind a half mile long island we had great smallmouth bass fishing, even taking many large fish on our Shenandoah Blue Popper.
A similar situation occurred one day on the James River. The main large pools gave us very poor action even when using sinking tip fly lines. When we came to a long island with about one-third of the river flowing behind it we had great fishing behind that island, much to the surprise of my two angling friends who live on the James River.
By adjusting our tactics to the ways the bass adjust to the stream levels we can often get great fishing.
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