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ou love your kayak! As you fished through the summer, caught plenty of nice fish (or at least that’s what you tell everyone) and now it’s time to hit the river in the fall for smallmouth. Good call! Many experts regard smallies as the hardest fighting fish around on a pound for pound basis. In the fall, they are as ravenous as bear getting ready to hibernate. Perfect! Before launching to take advantage of cold weather smallmouth patterns, recognize that your pattern has to change as well. Air temperatures cool and water temps cool even faster! While hypothermia may not have been an issue in the summer, it is a creeping danger as shown on the water temperature graph from the Potomac River Little Falls gage. The small triangles represent the historical average and in early September, the river is usually a comfortable 85 degrees but plunges to a chilly 50 degrees by the end of October; equating to a worst case survival time of around 1 hour. So, the first and most important part of attacking river smallies is to dress for success! November 2017
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Southern Kayak Fishing
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