Russian Smallmouths

[Smitty Fish]

Going to be staying around Guerneville area for 4 days. How’s river access for wading? Never fished this river. Any information would be helpful. Will be targeting Smallmouths.

[Jcolin]

I live in Guerneville, and been going out in the evenings fishing poppers from my boat with very little luck for smallmouth. Folks tell me there are smallmouth in the lower river but I've only caught them in the Healdsburg area. It's generally much better up there, unfortunately, the crowds have also been terrible. If you want to fish it's pretty difficult unless it's very early or right before dark.

That said, I was evacuated last night from the fire and from my understanding Guerneville, and Monte Rio are both under mandatory evacuation. It was confusing as I didn't receive the nixel alert on my cell phone, but could see the fire from my living room and didn't look good.

Hoping for the best

[Smitty Fish]

Sorry to hear about being evacuated. Hopefully they get these fires under control. Sounds like my trip might be on hold until the fire is contained. Thanks for the information. Be safe.

[JasonB]

I live in Guerneville, been going out in the evenings fishing poppers from my boat with very little luck for small largemouths. Folks tell me there are smallmouth in the lower river but ive only caught them in the healdsburg area, its generally much better up there unfortunately. The crowds have also been terrible, if you want to fish its pretty difficult unless its very early or right before dark. That said, I was evacuated Last night from the fire, and from my understanding guerneville, monte rio are both under mandatory evacuation. It was confusing as i didnt recieve the nixel alert on my cell phone, but could see the fire from my living room and didnt look good. Hoping for the best

Yikes! We had a very close call on a local fire here the other night too. The only place I was able to find info on it at first was twitter! I don’t even have a Twitter account, but that was what eventually came up from searching the net. Kind of disturbing, but thankfully in our case, they got the fire controlled pretty quick. Hope you can get safely home soon! Best of luck to you, I know how difficult that can be
JB

[Jcolin]

Thank you guys, I'm not on Twitter either but also found it to be very helpful with fire information. Am sort of used to the evacuations now with the “new normal” fire season. Wanted to add for smallmouth, smitty the best luck I've had is in the Camp Rose area of the river near Healdsburg. Haven't fished it this year but there seemed to be a pretty good concentration of fish there the past few years, and they were happy to take poppers in the evenings.

[Larry S]

Stay safe up there folks.
With regards to river smallmouth, I've had great success with
Fishigan's bass swinging beadhead buggers and similar flies.
Holes and riffles. What I like about them is that, unlike trout,
if your first drift is a "hit and miss," the smallmouth will often
be back for the next drift.

Best to you all.
Stay safe and keep laughing,
Larry S
Sun Diego