I start this with a bit of a caveat - I am mostly a "trout guy" but that is more by geography than by any other factor. I LOVE fishing for Smallmouth Bass (Micropterus dolomieu) but only get to do it maybe half a dozen times most years.
I am not a huge believer that fly pattern matters all that much - not nearly as much as most fly anglers seem to think, anyway. More than anything, being in the right place at the right time and making your fly look like food with catch more fish than will sweating all the details about what fly to use. And I believe that fly behavior and profile matters more than color, pattern choice, etc. most of the time. There are certainly times this is not true but more often than not, if a fish is willing to eat a minnow, they will hit a Murdich Minnow, a 3M minnow, a Bart-O-Minnow, Wisco Cisco, The Roamer, Dave Pinczkowski's Bad Hair Day or any number of other swimming type minnow flies. A number of top X-number of bass fly lists include Galloup's BangTail which is not a fly I am very familiar with but add it to that list.
You have probably heard the idea that 80% - or some other large, made up number - of Smallmouth Bass diet's are crayfish. Yes, crayfish are often quite important but in my literature searching, I am hard pressed to substantiate this number. While I carry some crayfish patterns, they are probably my least favorite flies to fish for smallies. I would rather catch them on topwaters or streamers I can see in the water. Smallies are rather opportunistic and are more than happy to eat a streamer or topwater much of the time. Pretend you are a Smallmouth Bass for a second, are you going to grab that crayfish that can fight back or a nice, soft bodied minnow with no dorsal spines?
What do smallies eat? The best answer is probably most anything they can get in their mouths. The fish above was taken on a single Buford that was about 8 inches long (Thanks, Brian!). In many places, crayfish are important in Smallmouth Bass diets but their diets are also quite variable. For example, I fish the Lower Wisconsin River somewhat regularly for smallies and the sandy habitat does not produce a lot of crayfish but Emerald Shiners and other forage fishes are quite abundant. On Northern Wisconsin Rivers, crayfish are certainly important but I catch more fish on topwaters and streamers - but that is how I prefer to fish.
What we do know about Smallmouth Bass diets is that they change as they get older and larger - an ontogenetic shift. As juveniles, they tend to feed on insects and other invertebrates and shift to fishes and crayfishes as they get older and larger (Scott and Angermeier 1998, Dauwalter and Fisher 2008). Smallmouth are quite opportunistic and will generally eat what is available to them. As always, it is worth knowing and understanding a little bit about the stream you are fishing to help with fly selection. This is where local fly shops, fisheries biologists, and others are often quite helpful. I typically start with a topwater, shift to a streamer, and grudgingly bounce the bottom if the above two options are not producing. Some places, I know I am going to quickly move from topwaters, other places, topwater flies produce more fish than other options.
My Bakers Dozen Fly Concepts
I did this earlier for Driftless trout flies and divided them by dry fly, nymph, and streamer. Here it seems to make more sense to divide them into topwater, mid-column, and flies meant to be fished along the bottom. This is how two of the best and most recent books on the subject of fly fishing for Smallmouth Bass both divide their fishing and fly patterns (Link 1 and 2).
My biases in creating this list are that I am usually fishing an 8 weight, sometimes a 7 weight, and quite rarely a 6 weight for bass. I have always been a believer that rod should be chosen to match the flies that will be cast and should be large enough that you are not fighting the fish for too long. Can you do it with a 6 weight, sure, but casting larger streamers with an 8 weight is so much easier. I do not buy arguments about the rod being lighter allowing you to fish all day because that is negated by having to work harder to cast larger flies on a smaller rod.
I mostly fish larger rivers - I'd probably have slightly different fly selections if I fished more small stream Smallmouth Bass. However, I have fished smallies in a number of other states and I think this list would work just fine across most of the country. But your mileage may vary - comment below what you think I am missing.
The List
Topwater
More than anything, I love to catch smallies on topwater flies - I am sure that is pretty much true of everyone that fishes for smallmouth. Topwater strikes simply can't be beat! They are not all the massive blow-ups we think of. The slow, subtle "confidence eats" are just as much fun and it is often quite amazing how subtle an 18 inch bass can take a wiggly fly (more below). For topwater flies, most of the time, I think we are imitating frogs, injured baitfishes, terrestrial insects like grasshoppers and cicadas, and odonates - damselflies and dragonflies.
Standard Popper - By standard popper, I mean poppers made of a foam, balsa, or cork body with a face of maybe about a 3/8 to a half inch in diameter. There are many great commercial options - Boogle Bugs, Double-Barrell Poppers, Howitzer heads, etc. I enjoy cutting, sanding, and crafting my own bodies from foam and there is something to be said for lower floating deer hair bugs. For my money, Jason Martina's BassPop Fly Shop's balsa flies are spectacular. I don't know how important pattern or material is here. Do I need to pay $8 apiece for Boogle Bugs? I don't know but I do know that the folks at Tight Lines Fly Shop - who fish bass a lot more than I do - swear by them. I don't fish bass enough to really understand the nuances of different popper materials.
Probably more important than the fly pattern is how you fish it and what color it is. While a popper looks little like a damselfly or dragonfly, bass do seem to key in on colors of the predominant odonates. If there is a mistake that anglers make in fishing poppers - one I am often guilty of - it is fishing it too fast. Let that fly sit until the ripples dissipate and experiment a bit with how big of a pop to give it. Sometimes, a big, loud "plop" works best, other times, a subtle twitch is where it is at. I generally try aggressive first and watch how fish react.
Below are links to local fly shop choices:
Ol' Mr. Wiggly - The story about Jack Allen and how the "wiggly flies" came about is in the Karczynski and Landwehr book, Smalllmouth: Modern Fly-Fishing Methods, Tactics, and Techniques, an excellent book and my first choice of smallmouth books today. It was a fly that was designed to be easy to cast and it proved to be a subtle and effective producer of bass on the large flats that exist on "the river" that Tight Lines Fly Shop runs many trips on. The fly pattern is a pretty good - but not terribly exacting - dragonfly/damselfly imitation. What it does have - and why I think the fly works so well - movement is built into the fly with all those rubber legs. Small currents and twitches of the rod will send those legs into action.
While the idea was pretty novel, today there are tons of different "wiggly" flies. That they have created there own category of flies is an indication of how the concept has radiated from Northeastern Wisconsin to the rest of the Smallmouth Bass world. The fly is the epitome of subtle when it comes to targeting Smallmouth Bass. There are times that the "splash" of a popper landing and the "plop" of moving it scare fish, rather than attract them. This is when a wiggly fly should be your choice of topwater flies.
Below are links to Tight Lines Fly Fishing's offerings of "wiggly" flies.
Deer Hair Diver - Dahlberg's Deer Hair Diver is a wonderful pattern that sort of straddles the line of topwater and subsurface fly. As the name suggests, it dives. It is a rather all-purpose fly and imitates frogs, minnows and other fishes, and really just looks and acts like food.
Pencil Popper - This is probably the one that I am least wed to and would replace with something like Sobota's Swimming Jimmy or similar wounded baitfish pattern. However, there are places where the pencil popper or a somewhat similar Crease Fly is the perfect choice.
Frog Pattern (of some sort) - This is admittedly something I don't fish that often but I do know that frogs can be pretty important. And tying frog imitations is a place where tyers have gone, well, a little crazy. I could probably save a pattern here by just tying the Dahlberg Diver in a froggy configuration or using a frog-ish popper.
There are no shortage of options here and I don't really have a favorite pattern and mostly use poppers or divers but since frog imitations are a lot of fun to tie, I include one. I think frogs as a mid-column fly would be equally as effective.
Mid-Column
There are about a thousand different mid-column streamer fly patterns and as I said above, I think most work about as well as another. I typically like to carry a few that are quite flashy, some with sort of an intermediate amount of flash, and a few flies that are free or nearly free of flashy materials. Then I let the fish dictate what they want that day.
Streamer flies can be categorized by their action in the water as swim flies, jig flies, and push flies. Swim flies, well, swim; jig flies tend to have large, heavy heads that create a jigging motion; and push flies have large, water pushing heads, often crafted of deer hair.
Murdich Minnow - If I am tying a streamer on, this is typically the first fly that I tie on. This is a classic swim fly that was created for the salt but freshwater anglers quickly adopted the fly. It is easily colored to match a number of different baitfishes and while Flashabou is standard for the pattern, you can subdue it a bit with choices of different, less flashy materials.
There are a ton of different ways you can tie this fly but it has a bucktail tail that keeps the flashabou on top of it from fouling, a bit of bulk is added with ice fiber, EP fibers, or something similar, and the head/rest of the body is estaz or other bulky flash chenille. Here is a tutorial similar to how I tied it most of the time: Trident Fly Fishing. The video above is a little bulkier than I tie it most of the time but I am looking for it to be a Notropis shiner imitation most of the time. I change the hook to alter the weight a bit but this fly is best when it is pretty much neutrally buoyant.
Lynch's Drunk and Disorderly - Tommy Lynch's D&D is a great fly that takes a bit more time to tie than the Murdich Minnow but it has a pretty different swimming action. It is, essentially, the fly angler's Rapala. It has a wobble similar to the one that makes the original Rapala so effective. And it is a highly adaptable as the number of D&D options shows us.
If I hadn't chosen the D&D, I'd have chosen Andreas Andersson's Sid. The Sid shares a similar wobble and is equally deadly. Both are also great trout streamers.
Bill Sherer's Tongue Depressor - I dedicated an entire post to this fly - it is simple and effective. And it is quite unique; essentially it is the fly angler's spoon. It wobbles when retrieved and I know it does not look like anything terribly special but trust me on this one, it is. I include it because it has an action unlike most any other fly and some days, that is what works.
Follow the linked post for details about how to tie and fish the pattern. To purchase your own, they are sold by Bill at We Tie It Fly Shop as are the materials to tie your own.
TeQueely - I don't know why but there is something about brown and yellow that just seems to work for Smallmouth Bass. There isn't much to a TeQueely - it is basically a rubber-legged crystal bugger. The hardest part of tying it is working the crystal chenille around the rubber legs.
There are a lot of variations on this pattern and I have seen people get pretty fancy with their TeQeelies but simple is just fine, I think. For whatever reasons, I always think of this more as a spring and fall fly. That may be because during the summer, I'd rather be fishing a topwater fly or a swim fly style streamer.
Woolly Buggers - For me, buggers are the classic small stream smallmouth fly. Buggers are what you want them to be - crayfish, insects, leeches, hellgrammites, small baitfish, or other aquatic organisms. While I put it as a mid-column fly, buggers are what you want them to be. Weight it more heavily and it becomes more of a bottom bouncer. Put a cone or large bead and it becomes more of a fly angler's jig. Buggers are as versatile fly as there is. So, while I really tried to bounce this one from the list and replace it with another streamer pattern (I could really use a push-style fly like a small Bufford on this list). However, because of the versatility of the humble Woolly Bugger, particularly for anglers fishing small streams, this one needs to stay.
Bottom Bouncers
Let's face it, this is probably nobody's favorite way to fish smallmouth but sometimes it needs to be done. Crayfish are the thing we are imitating most commonly with bottom bouncing flies but sculpin, ruffe, gobies, darters, and other small benthic oriented fishes are common smallmouth foods.
Clouser Deep Minnow - This is the original jiggy streamer. It is not always a bottom bouncer, you can lighten it with beadchain eyes and/or fish it faster. Early on, I wrote an entire series about the Clouser Deep Minnow, it is one of the most effective Smallmouth Bass patterns that there is and has been so for at least four decades. I don't know that I need to write much more.
I suppose if I wanted to cheat the list a bit, a Half and Half is just a modified Clouser, right?
Pat Ehler's Grim Reaper - as good a crayfish pattern as there is. It is the fly anglers bass jig. It has a Cohen's Wiggle Tail (I am sure that the Swimming Crawdad Tails would work just as well), a rattle, and a pretty flashy body and abundant rubber legs that take the place of the jigs plastic skirt.
This also looks enough like a sculpin or a goby to earn a place on this list. To order the original, The FlyFishers.
Your Favorite Crayfish Pattern - I am not a huge believer that your crayfish pattern has to be anything special but it should be colored to be somewhat similar to what you find in rivers near you, the pinchers should not be overly large (fish avoid crayfish with large pinchers when they can), and it should be able to be hopped along the bottom. I like flies that are "front-heavy" - flies with dumbbell eyes.
I could, I suppose, write an entire post on crayfish fly patterns but to be honest, I just don't care to. While I understand how important crayfish are to smallmouth - and trout - there are just so many ways I would rather catch fish than to bounce the bottom. Not that there is anything wrong with it but if I can catch smallies in other ways, I'll choose other ways.
If there are mistakes we make in fly selection, I think it is largely that we fish flies that are too large with pinchers that are too big. Looking at a study from a couple of Missouri's best Ozark streams, most crayfish consumed by Smallmouth Bass ranged from less than an inch to about an inch and a half (Probst et al. 1984). With that in mind, something like Whitlock's Near Nuff Crayfish is a great choice. But choose what you like and it'll almost certainly work.
Wrap-Up
I am certainly missing things and was a little vague at times, I know. I was a little surprised by how quickly I used up my self-allotted 13 fly patterns. There are some pretty big holes there in my mind. First, there is not a streamer with a big, water pushing head nor something that is more specifically a sculpin imitation. And I am missing something - like The Roamer or similar pattern - that has the Deceiver-style tail. I carry a number of different streamers because I want to change up the flash, the swimming action, the weight, the profile, or any number of other factors.
Fortunately for us, we don't have to limit ourselves to 13 fly patterns, particularly not when we are fishing from a boat.
As always, I have not illusions that I am the end-all, be-all source of information. Below are a number of links to other sources of information about Smallmouth Bass and flies to catch them.
Links
Information about Smallmouth Bass
Fly Selection
Literature Cited / References / Reading List
Buynak, G.L., Gruzynski, A.J. and Mohr JR, H.W., 1982, January. Comparison of the food habits of smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieui) at two stations on the Susquehanna River. In Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science (pp. 127-132). Pennsylvania Academy of Science.
Dauwalter, D.C. and Fisher, W.L., 2008. Ontogenetic and seasonal diet shifts of smallmouth bass in an Ozark stream. Journal of Freshwater Ecology, 23(1), pp.113-121.
Probst, W.E., Rabeni, C.F., Covington, W.G. and Marteney, R.E., 1984. Resource use by stream-dwelling rock bass and smallmouth bass. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 113(3), pp.283-294.
A fun article, thanks! With regard to "𝑀𝑦 𝑏𝑖𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐼 𝑎𝑚 𝑢𝑠𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛 8 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 𝑎 7 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑟𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑦 𝑎 6 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑏𝑎𝑠𝑠. 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑎 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑟𝑜𝑑 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑛 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑓𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔. 𝐶𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 6 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎𝑛 8 𝑤𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑒𝑟. 𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑏𝑢𝑦 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑜𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜 𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑦 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑙𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑓𝑙𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑎 𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟…