In addition to guided trout fishing, Smoky Mountain Fly Fishing Outfitters offers guided trips for Small Mouth Bass. If you’ve never caught a Small Mouth Bass on a fly rod before you are in for a treat! The Small Mouth is per size, arguably, the gamest of fish that swims. Small Mouth are fierce predators and will literally attack a bait fish imitation with a ferocity that cannot be describe any other way except for sheer hatred! When fishing with top water poppers the take from “Smallies” is explosive, sometimes down right startling! They fight hard from the very start and never give up. A trout only wishes it could fight as hard a Small Mouth!

We fish for Small Mouth starting in April all the way into October. The action is explosive, and very consistent. These trips can be either on the Tuckasegee River, or the Little Tennessee River, and range from either wade or float trips.

In 2004 the Tennessee Valley Authority did a population study on all of their controlled watersheds. At the conclusion of the study, the Tuckasegee River was said to have the healthiest population of Small Mouth in all of the TVA watersheds. The healthiest population also means some of the largest fish. Just this past summer we had an eight year old boy catch a 4.5 lbs Small Mouth. The current state record for Small Mouth Bass is 10.0 lbs. There is the possibility for that record to be broken on the Tuckasegee River, each year we see fish much larger than the current record holding fish! But remember that the big boys didn’t get that way by being easy to catch!

The Little Tennessee River is a great river for Small Mouth fishing. The TVA study concluded that the “Little T” had the largest population of Small Mouth out of the TVA controlled watersheds. This is definitely true, there seems to be a Small Mouth lurking behind every rock and log in the river! The Little T is also a good river to wade fish for Smallies. The river is wide and shallow in most places, and there are lots of rocks and shelves for fish to hide in waiting to ambush you flies.

Just because we are mainly centered around fly fishing doesn’t meant that we fly fish exclusively. We welcome the use of all tackle for Small Mouth. We certainly use shallow running crank baits, soft plastics, and occasional live bait.