smallmouth nymph fishing

What exactly is the hellgrammite? You hear everybody talking about them for smallmouth but in my experience most fishermen have never seen one. Well, this guy is actually the flat many legged larvae of the ferocious looking Dobson fly. Both the larvae and the adults can pinch the heck outta you so handle them with care. Actually its only the female adults that can hurt you. Just another example of how fishing is like life. Hellgrammites spend up to three years underwater in the larvae form before crawling out on land to become a Dobson fly. They only live like a week as an adult. The larvae lives under rocks and leaves on the stream bottom where they are miniature monsters devouring smaller insects. I cant imagine the horror of being a little bug and having one of these monsters crawl over and grab me. I'm always a bit afraid of them when I seine one myself. But to the bass they are like french fries, just with lots of little legs and pincers. When drifting hellgie nymphs, I use a floating fly line, long leader, weighted nymph, and strike indicators. I like the little pinch on foam strike indicators for this. Ill set one indicator about a quarter of the length of the leader up from the leader butt and then another about halfway. Then as the fly tumbles into deeper water, I can first watch the one indicator then the other as the fly sinks. You want the fly tumbling along as deep as you can get it. preferably just ticking bottom every now and then. Set the hook on any pauses or jerks during your drift. Use a short cast, as short as you can get away with without scaring the fish. (Its a trade off longer casts wont scare fish but you miss most of your strikes.) Cast upstream and across in the run right below a riffle. With only twenty feet or less of line out, you can follow the line with your rod lifting the rod to keep as much slack out of the line as possible without dragging the fly as it sweeps down and past you. Ill use Twistons to get the fly down if I have to. Twistons are little lead strips packaged in little cardboard books like matches. They make casting awfull but your only casting a few feet. (In really swift water in can become the old chuck and duck.) I generally tie my own hellgie flies, just generic black wooley buggers but with something like swiss straw tied along the back. Examples of better known flies I'd imitate a hellgie with are the EZ Mite by Orvis, Woolly Bugger, Murray's Hellgrammite, Delaware River Hellgrammite, bitch creek bug, Michael Verduin's Mighty Mite Hellgrammite pattern, or Braided Stone Fly Crawler by Percy's flies (worlds best prices on flies BTW) all in as big a size as you can throw on whatever rod you have.