Fly Fishing-Talking of the Large Mouth Stream Bass

Large Mouth Bass Stream Tactics

Large-mouth bass streams are not as beautiful as the cool, fast water rivers where the small-mouth lives, but they have a friendly, restful attraction all their own. The river large-mouth is a great game fish-just as he is in the lakes of America. He will take artificial flies and artificial lures at water temperatures that make the small-mouth almost completely a live bait fish. Large-mouth bass rivers are mostly slow current streams with mud bottoms and pretty heavy weed growth. Many of them are outlets of lakes or just connecting waterways between lakes. Others drain swamp lands or rush-covered flats, like the St. Clair marshes in Michigan.

In the Ozarks, there are a great number of quaint and highly scenic rivers flowing down through terraced hardwood forests and picturesque gorges where you may float and fish for days or weeks-camping out on pleasant sand ban in the rivers. These are both small-mouth and large-mouth streams. There are small-mouth bass in the faster, sand and gravel-bottomed rocky stretches. Then, in the next mud-bottomed sloughs, you will find large-mouth bass. In the deep South, all the bass rivers are large-mouth streams. They merge into bayous and lagoons that form ideal large-mouth water.

Large-mouth bass in streams seldom feed in water under 55° F. From this temperature up to 65°, you will find the bass in water from 1 ft. to 3 ft. deep in the evening or early morning; and in water 2 ft. to 5 ft. deep in the daytime. The large-mouth will be on mud bottom; slow-current pools are good places. Along the shore line, near underwater logs, stumps, and brush piles and undercut banks, you will find excellent hiding places where large-mouth bass lie in wait for minnows, frogs or aquatic insects and larvae. Weed beds, rushes and lily pad areas are favorite large-mouth water in streams as in lakes. Under low, overhanging foliage along grassy or wooded banks is also a favorite hang-out.

In 55°-65° water, large-mouth bass feed freely on nearly everything they can find-minnows, frogs, crawfish, worms, hellgrarnites, fresh water shrimp, every kind of aquatic insects and larvae and anything else that falls or lives in the water. They take on all comers. From this you can see that bass bugs, streamer flies, bucktails, nymphs and spinner-flies all look good to the large-mouth.

I prefer fishing with a bass bug because it's more fun-and also I get plenty of bass. The smashing surface rises, for one thing, make this about the most enjoyable way of fishing for bass. If the fish are bottom feeding, then use one of the underwater fly methods-a streamer, bucktail or spinner-fly fished deep with an action handling, or a nymph fished with a natural drift retrieve. Either does well in these temperatures.

Bait casting with surface lures, or drifting with any of the natural food mentioned before, will get you bass in this water temperature bracket.

If the water is murky, live bait is almost a necessity. In muddy water, you can sometimes get bass by fishing very close to stumps, large rocks, and fallen trees in the water, as well as at the mouths of feeder streams. This is because the water is clearer in these places.

Tommy Thompson is a fishing researcher and enthusiast who is committed to providing the best Fly fishing information possible. To see more of Tommy's articles please visit us at: http://flyfishingguy.com/

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