A Day on the Water — Fly rod popper bass

The 3rd day I launched at the Pigeon River Mouth and paddled up to a backwater Channel were Smallmouth and Largemouth have taken small poppers and subtle floater divers for the previous 2 years.  The second fish was a big smallmouth that took a 1/0 White Dive banger hard.  I just about had her beat and was pulling straight up while she was boring straight down in the weeds right under the kayak.  The rod was a hybrid cobbled together from the butt of a nice 8 Weight St. Croix with a random tip half that came from a shorter...

My Brother In Law, an accomplished photographer, and canoeist accompanied  me to photograph and video the action of some fly lures and get some bass and pike hits at higher zoom than my cellphone videos.  He got this great series of still shots of the 6/0 Banana Dog, sashaying across the surface Left, Right, Left.  Amazingly, nothing was there to blow it up in the lily pads where we tried it.     5 6 7  10  12  13 You can see it turns to one side with a short crisp strip.  Its sideways position in the water sets it up...