Peaches in the summertime...

I'm a big fan of old bluegrass and mountain music. One really old song, shady grove talks of "peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall".  Which I always took to mean everything has a time and a place. Of course this song predates container ships from south America and fruits being picked green and then ripened by exposing them to ethylene gas but that's another story. Anyways back to the point, peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall is the way I try to fish. What, today, is going to be the best stream fishing? Where would be best? What's in season so to speak. The people that know me know I'm crazy about smallmouth fishing and do it well over a hundred days a year. Which you would never guess by looking at my facebook posts lately which have been mostly pictures of hybrid stripers. And I've gotten some messages asking where are the smallmouth pics. Well, the places I catch smallies at have been either flooded or the smallies have been spawning. Studies show that something like 15 percent of river smallmouth don't spawn every year. And its been my experience that many of those are larger fish so some years when the conditions are perfect I just keep smallmouth fishing during the spawn just not targeting spawning fish. Well conditions have been anything from perfect so I've switched to hybrids. Which conditions have been swell for. High water has them running way up my smallmouth streams which means I can stay away from the dreaded Ohio river dams and fish for them in peace. I know the last time we had a high water year like this guys caught wipers all summer all the way past Dayton in the Great Miami which is a long long ways from the Ohio. So I'm hoping even though things are going to swing back to smallmouth fishing here soon that even us small river and stream guys can keep catching some stripes mixed in with our bronze all summer. Not quite as big of stripes tonight as the last four or five nights but a few more in number which made up for it. On the paddletail  swimbait just below and around a set of old stone bridge abutments that set in current.