What a contrast in the types of fishing I experienced. As you can see from the picture to the right, my brother and I fished a large notable smallmouth river over the course of three days.
Although the river we fished is highly acclaimed for its bass, my brother and I caught a ton of fallfish and only a few bass. It wasn't that the bass weren't there, but these smallies get hammered with fishing pressure, and live bait is about the only way you are really going to get into them.
We also fished a small mountain tributary to the river. This stream held a decent population of wild browns and native brookies.
Here is an example of one of the stream's resident browns.
There is nothing like crawling around on your hands and knees in search of trout smaller than your index finger. I know the bright white shirt didn't help in the stealth department.
But, catching a 9-10" native brookie makes it worth the effort.
It was just my dad and me on the second visit to the small stream.
And, despite our best efforts, including some bow and arrow casting, not many trout were brought to hand.
This brookie did succomb to the Usual, and in the process he really jacked up my leader. Yeah, what was I thinking fishing dry-dropper in such a small stream.
All pictures except for the first one were taken by this guy.
He couldn't help but take a few strange closeups of himself!
