By Jacob Milholland
Summertime in North Georgia brings warming water temperatures to the point that many of our trout streams become unfishable. Luckily for us, Georgia isn’t limited to trout. Spotted, redeye, shoal, and some largemouth bass are abundant in many creeks and rivers throughout the state, providing opportunities to fly fish close to home.
Where: Look for public access in Wildlife Management areas or public parks that have creeks or rivers that flow into a major lake such as Allatoona or Lanier. For those looking for trout stream caliber beauty this time of year, check out some of Georgia’s seasonal Delayed Harvest trout streams or lower elevations of some of your favorite trout rivers and creeks. Once summer temperatures arrive, these creeks and rivers can harbor bass. On bigger rivers, target shade lines, especially through the hottest part of the day! You may have heard the expression, “Bass don’t have eyelids!” This is a simplification of the truth: shade lines provide perfect ambush points and cooler water. Oxygenated water such as a riffle or shoal can also hold bass. “Foam is home” applies for bass as well as trout.
Flies: My favorite way to catch bass is with Boogle Bug poppers. These flies showcase the aggressive attitude and explosive hatred of topwater bugs that make bass so enjoyable to catch. If you want to double your chances, the popper-dropper rig can pick up fish that don’t want to come up to the surface. This rig is a repurposed trout tactic: tie a light subsurface fly such as a size 8 Pat’s Rubber Legs below a popper with a short length of tippet based on the water depth and current speed. Twitch and pop the bug every so often but follow with a dead drift. Experiment with cadence between twitches and pops; these fish will demolish a faster retrieve, but more often than not, the fish will take a fly while drifted along current seams.
For streamers, have a mix of both mid-column and bottom bouncing flies. Try various retrieves with baitfish flies such as the Clouser Minnow, Coffey’s Sparkle Minnow, or Henry Cowen’s Somethin’ Else. Crawfish and hellgrammite patterns such as Kraft’s Krittermite, Whitlock’s Near Nuff Crayfish, and various colored Wooly Buggers drifted through seams and riffles or stripped on the bottom can entice bites when baitfish patterns won’t.
Equipment: For this style of fishing, I use my trout gear while wading fishing creeks and rivers. Think nine-foot, five weight fly rods and matching reels. If you’re floating a bigger river, try going to a six or seven weight fly rod to aid in distance as well as fishing fighting ability, in case you need to pull a true monster bass out of cover. Regardless of rod size, I prefer to fish tropical or warm-water core, weight-forward lines with a long head during the warmest part of the year to combat sticky and ill-casting fly line.
Leader and Tippet: I recommend beefing up from standard trout sizes. These fish can be as line shy as trout (especially in gin-clear water), but I start with a 1X, seven-and-a-half-foot monofilament leader to combat line twist caused by the cupped face of bass poppers and to provide a buffer of strength for bigger bass. Keep a couple spools of both monofilament and fluorocarbon tippet from 1X-3X to make adjustments when needed.
Jacob Milholland is the Store Manager at Cohutta Fishing Company. You can find their website at www.cohuttafishingco.com.