Fly Fishing for Smallmouth Bass with Ryan Walker- Part 1 of 2

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Ryan Walker is the best fisher that I know and that is not hyperbole!  He has fished from Alaska to the San Juan River, all the famous rivers out west, and everywhere around the Midwest.  He can spin fish, fly fish, and is an amazing fly tyer.  He can guide for salmon, walleye, and trout but smallmouth have a special place in his heart.  Aside from being so darn knowledgeable, he is as nice as the day is long and is an outstanding teacher!  If I were to make a list of all of the best qualities that a fishing guide could have, Ryan would check all of the boxes and then add some more good characteristics to the list.  I had the joy to fish with him last summer and had the absolute pleasure to fish with him again this summer.  

We met up on Wednesday morning and it was like seeing an old friend in the sense that we just picked up from where we left off even though it had been a year since we saw one another.  On this particular trip though, I was also fortunate to bring along a very good friend of mine, Cris Carpenter.  Cris is a heck of a fisher as well and runs Carpenter Bros. Fly Rods.  The bamboo rods that he makes and graphite rods he builds are of the highest quality and he is a craftsman in every sense of the word.  We have gone on a few fishing trips together and he is the perfect guy to fish with.  He is passionate about fishing but never gets too up or down and always has a good joke to share.

We got on a southwest Missouri river at about 8:30 that morning and we saw one other boat that day.  Ryan told me that I could share the name of the river, but I don't want to exploit his favorite river or give away anything that I shouldn't.  I hope that you can respect and understand that.  It would break my heart if he started running into folks on his quiet little stretch of water that said they were there because they read about it on some moron's blog post.  I'm not trying to be weird about this, but just trying to be respectful.

We started off with poppers around grass and it didn't take long to start getting bites.  My first fish came pretty quickly and it was a beautiful, native...bluegill.  We all got a pretty good laugh out of that.  The next one was a little smallmouth but this was my first smallmouth that I had ever caught on topwater.  Ryan said that if the topwater bite wasn't on fire that we would switch to streamers pretty quickly.  Since it was a little slow we made the switch and didn't look back.

We threw bigger streamers and articulated streamers the rest of the day.  Drunk and Disorderlies, Roamers, and Bangtails got the job done on intermediate sink-tip lines.  As the morning went along, the fishing got better and better.  Most of the fish in the morning were the smaller ones of the day with the bigger fish making an appearance in the afternoon.  The fish did EXACTLY what Ryan said they were going to do as well.  The smaller ones were quick to hit and spit the fly so you had to be quick.  I missed a lot of fish as a result but the bite was consistent.  The bigger ones were more committed to eating and I only missed one of those.  Sure, I would have liked to land every fish that bit but getting the bigger ones to the boat was a much higher priority.

I will post more pictures and information about the bigger fish on Monday, so for today, here are some pictures from the morning as well as our outstanding lunch.  Ryan cooked chicken fajitas on the riverbank and good gracious was it restaurant quality.  While it could have been the appetite that we worked up over the morning, I think it was Ryan's "basic" marinade that included no less than 20 ingredients.  Please make sure you come back for part 2 on Monday!

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of this immature bald eagle!