Coming to the realization that I had been over looking a prime game species outside my back door was a tough pill to swallow. I can only attritbute my ignorance and close minded though patterns to inexpereince and fear. You see, where I am from the river smallmouth community is a sordid and untrustworthy group with an ill repute and a lack of tolerance for newcomers, or so I thought. So perhaps this is another reason that I had avoided this scene all together to this point. After multiple deliberations with others that are as ignorant as I, we decide to risk life, limb, and reputation and find our states hidden smallies. Boy are we glad we did.
It seems as though we had been frightented off by the louder minority of the previously mentioned seedy river smallie knights, and as we began to dig deeper we found that the keepers of this little known realm were actually quite noble and amicable. We made friends and realized that we were just plain dumb (insert cracker barrel joke here) and we formulated a plan of attack...sort of.
Lets us back up the proverbial bus. Our area is not a smorgasbord of smallmouth orgy-like festivities, it is however a small but rich gold mine of large, pissed off, tiger striped, acquatic missles. There are very very few navigable rivers that have these Kim Jong Ill like creatures in our state, but where they are, THEY ARE. Our first few attempts were ill conceived and yielded little in the way of measurable success, however the scenery and the possibilty of catching new species on the fly was enough to keep us coming back.
Now, we know that most everyone outside of our area has had their fair share of smallmouth glory and excuse our geographic damnation, but the crash of the bronze back into a well placed and unassuming popper is just a thing of destructive beauty that we had not yet been privy too. Needless to say we are now hooked. The trek of 2 hours, the ridiculous hill to climb, the snakes, the tube hatches, the heat, the portaging...None of it matters because now we know that once that big fat piece of foam hits the water and you twitch it like that...yeah just like that, an invisible moment of ferocity is awaiting in a time stopping instant known only to you. Smallmouth.