photoYesterday I fished with a good friend of mine on the James River.  We originally were going to fish for musky all day but I wanted to get in some smallmouth bass fishing before they headed down deep.  We started out the first hour of the trip fishing for the toothy guys and moved a giant that followed my fly during the figure eight.  I also had a fish in the high 30’s inch range follow the fly three times to the boat.  I switched over to a popper shortly after the musky encounters.  I didn’t think I would catch anything on topwater with fall being here and cooler weather.  It took about three cast and a smallmouth bass came up and ate.  Surely a fluke right? Nope, we had good action for the whole day on top.  There were more fish deep than shallow, but still had a good number of big bass cruising the banks and shallow structure.  I will likely not run anymore bass trips this year so this was a good closer to a great bass season.