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Friday, July 1, 2011

tactics for small stream warmwater fish

Swinging streamers for smallies. Dead drifting nymphs and buggers for quillback. On my local warmwater streams the same trout tactics I would apply to driftless area trout streams apply to warm water specs. On this outing I observed quillback taking insect larvae in the lower sections of riffles. Neat to see flashes of silver as the sucker would twist into position to grab a bite.With the water being very clear the smallies would spot me from long distances. The fish on this stream haven't been too easy to catch. Just enough of a challenge to make it interesting.

The silver of a quillback


good looking warmwater stream in Iowa

4 comments:

  1. Small stream warmwater is my favorite place to be. That stream in the picture looks just about perfect. Nice photos.

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  2. Great pics. The scale shot looks like fish armor. Great looking water and smallie. Tight Lines.

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  3. Awesome Quillies! I've only ever caught 1, do they actively hit the flies or is it a drawn out ordeal?

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  4. John - quilback are picky eaters. I've had times when they're feeding and they'll take a nymph easily -- just like feeding trout. Gotta have a perfect drift and get it right infront of them. This quilback in the picture took my bugger as I was drifting a run for smallies. That's one fun thing about these streams -- you drift something on the bottom and you never know what will eat it.

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