S7, Ep 58: Tackle Talk: Essential Fly Lines for Smallmouth Success with Brendan Ruch

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Brendan Ruch - Professional Guide at Ruch Angling / Log Jam Fishing Company

In this episode: Guide Brendan Ruch shares his essential 3-line smallmouth bass system for optimal coverage across all water conditions. Topics include fly line selection strategies, rod action matching, and seasonal color patterns for consistent smallmouth success.

Key fishing techniques covered: • Titan Sink Tip Type 3 fishing in high water • Line weight matching to rod actions • Seasonal intermediate line switching • Fly color selection for water clarity • Streamer depth control techniques

Location focus: Not specified (general smallmouth waters)

Target species: Smallmouth bass

Equipment discussed: Lamson 3-pack reels, SA Titan lines, Bass Bug lines, Infinity lines, Titan Sink Tip Type 3, intermediate lines, streamers (peanuts, nut jobs, leggy boi)

Key questions answered: • How to select 3 essential lines for smallmouth • What line weights work with different rod actions • How to match fly colors to water conditions • When to switch seasonal intermediate lines

Best for: Intermediate to advanced anglers interested in smallmouth bass fishing strategies and fly line optimization

Marvin Cash00:00:00

Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower, back with a Ruche report with the man himself, Brendan Roush. Brendan, how are you?

Brendan Ruch00:00:11

I'm good, Marvin. Sitting in the Costco parking lot waiting to fill up. Drove in here on fumes.

Marvin Cash00:00:16

Oh, there you go. So are you gonna get the hot dog, the pizza, or the rotisserie chicken for dinner?

Brendan Ruch00:00:22

I don't know if I can step inside. My clothes are soaking wet for working in that hot heat.

Marvin Cash00:00:28

Yeah, unfortunately, not fishing there, right?

Brendan Ruch00:00:31

No. No. Getting back to fishing asap, though. We got some rain the next couple days, and I'm. I'm just gonna ride the high water from now on. I'm.I'm done riding the bench.

Marvin Cash00:00:41

Yeah, because you've been kind of. It's been kind of iffy in your neck of the woods for what, about a month, month and a half?Like, you could fish if you had to, but you're kind of like, just didn't want to kind of make it happen, right?

Brendan Ruch00:00:51

Yeah. Yeah. I had to take the responsible route and work. Work when I could with the other gig. So now I'm kind of over that. And I'm getting really.I'm getting boat fever, I guess, or cabin fever to get in the boat.

Marvin Cash00:01:08

Yeah, it's always tough when you kind of have to live in the real world, and you can fish when the real world lets you in. The fishing's not good when that happens, right?

Brendan Ruch00:01:15

Yeah, it's. No. No bueno. We don't like that.

Marvin Cash00:01:18

No.And so, you know, since, you know, there's really not a lot to talk about on the fishing front, we kind of thought about kind of a question I was kicking around with you. You know, I think we're both fans of those lamps and three pack reels.I think we've talked about them before, and particularly for people that are fishing smallmouth or they're in some other kind of predator game where they're either maybe fishing a lot of streamers for trout or whatever.Lamson makes these great, incredibly affordable, bulletproof three packs where you get a reel and two spools, and then the question becomes, what on earth do you put on the spools? And so maybe we've got an official listener question, but I thought it'd be kind of interesting for us to talk about for smallmouth.If you had to pick your three lines, you know, what would they be for smallmouth?

Brendan Ruch00:02:02

Definitely be. If you have a super fast rod. We'll start at the top. I'll do bass bug if you don't have a super fast rod, you can go with the infinity warm.That's going to cover your, your top water bases and then some sort of full intermediate. I, the SA stuff is great but, but you have to switch throughout the season which kind of gets under my skin a little bit.Um, so you've got the full intermediate which is gonna be your like cool to mild temperature line and then the tropical clear tip. Great lines, they fish really well, they last a long time. Uh, I know airflow makes like a four season line.I've had some clients bring that out this year based on Mike Schultz recommendation and they, they seem to like it a lot and that you don't have to change that line supposedly. So we've got that covered on the intermediate side.And then this year I mentioned it at some point during the spring, but the Titan Sink tip type 3 was crucial during the, the high water that we had in the spring this year. It was just like money for fishing peanuts or nut jobs and being able to get them down and keep them down on your kind of like erratic like pop pop.And then on that drift the line's going to be sinking and it's not going to alter the fly, but it's going to keep that head down. So the next time you hit it with a pop pop, it's going to be a lateral movement, not going up and down.

Marvin Cash00:03:34

Yeah. And so why don't we do this?Why don't we go all the way back to the beginning with the floaters and we'll work through them and talk about the selection? Because I want to kind of give people a little bit of detail.You know, you were talking about superfast and we were actually talking about this before we started recording on the floaters that, you know. So for example, I've got a seven weight Scott Radian and I think that's a pretty fast rod. But you're telling me I haven't fished the Loomis.That's even faster. And so really what you're doing is you're, you know, trying to take advantage.I think, you know, some of those lines are two line weights heavy versus one lightweight heavy. And that's really the adjustment you're making there, right?

Brendan Ruch00:04:06

Yeah. So the, the Titan series of lines and like for Rio you're going to have, I think, I believe it's outbound.There's going to be two line sizes heavy, it's similar kind of short head, but you can like. So every fly rod company is going to have a flagship rod series.So you have NRX with G, Loomis with Sage, you have the R8 and then they're going to have a faster rod series. So they're going to have NRX Salt and then R8 Salt.And those rods are going to be a little bit stiffer and you can fish either a line size under or the appropriate line size. It just depends on how much you want your rod to bend. And then you have the streamer specific rod designs.So you have like the NRX swim fly, which I've, I've really become a fan of. And it's. You're not gonna, you're not gonna get your typical like slow, smooth casting stroke with that, or at least I don't seem to.But I really enjoy being able to toss those like air resistant, water absorbing flies like a leggy boy. And there's some wheat in there too.So you're able to like cast them with accuracy without doing a ton of false casts, which makes everything so much easier. That's like springtime.And then when you have your super fast rods, they're gonna be tailored towards the, those lines already so you don't have to downsize your line there. But yeah, so it, when you're coming from flagship series, I would say you can underline with the Titan fly lines.

Marvin Cash00:05:48

Yeah. But if we go all the way back to the floaters. Right, so the bass bug is two times. Right?

Brendan Ruch00:05:53

Yeah. I'm sorry. So the, yeah, the bass bug is a Titan long, so that's just going to be a longer version of that Titan taper. And yeah, it's two times heavy.So if you have, if you have a flagship rod, which the Radian was, you know, Helios, all that stuff, like, if it's not streamer specific, I would, I would downsize that just so you can use the casting stroke that you're familiar with. And also you're not going to be crashing into the water as hard.

Marvin Cash00:06:22

Yeah. And so that one backing off a line, that's infinity because it's one line weight heavy. Right.

Brendan Ruch00:06:29

The infinity, I would go true to size on, on the rods you're using. That doesn't matter if it's flagship or the streamer rod, I would go, yeah.

Marvin Cash00:06:37

But I guess what I'm saying, a seven is really an eight. Like you're not, you're not trying to monkey around with it, but you're, you know, you would put like, if you put.So like for example, if you put a bass bug On a 7 weight, it's really a 9 weight line on a 7 weight ride. Right. And the Infinity is an 8 weight line on a 7 weight ride.

Brendan Ruch00:06:54

Yep.

Marvin Cash00:06:54

Yeah. And so, so that just to kind of. I don't know, we may have confused the hell out of everybody and I apologize.But you know, the short version is Super Bass 2x heavy flagship 1x heavy and that gets you the Bass bug taper or the Infinity respectively. Then we get to the intermediate lines and you talk about changing and are you changing for depth?Are you changing to adjust for the fact that when things get hot, fly lines can get soupy?

Brendan Ruch00:07:22

Yeah, it's to avoid having sticky lines in the boat. That full intermediate just doesn't want to shoot as much and I always change them out.So I'm not familiar with this, but I would imagine a soft line is gonna get tangled more often at your feet.

Marvin Cash00:07:37

Yeah. And then the flip side of that is, you know, you know, when it gets cold, those lines get stiff, the tropical lines get stiff and they don't shoot.So that's why you have to change. Right?

Brendan Ruch00:07:46

Yes.

Marvin Cash00:07:46

Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's that. And then we get to the, to the Titan 3. Right. And that's. Is that the i35 or is that a different line?

Brendan Ruch00:07:55

No. So that line I believe is like a 10 or 12 foot sink tip and that is going to be a cold to mild line.I, I don't fish that in the summer just because of flows typically. I'm sure. You know, I go out this week. I'm gonna be fishing the i35 just because of clarity.But yeah, so that, that line is gonna be a lot like the Titan full intermediate and that it's not gonna be the best in super warm temperatures.

Marvin Cash00:08:25

It got you. But the benefit. Right. The great thing about these new essay lines is that they. You don't have that hinge. Right.To your point, what we were talking about is the fly stays in the zone because the line is kind of, you know, sinks at a. Sinks almost level to the bottom parallel.

Brendan Ruch00:08:39

Yes. But I, I want to be, I want to be clear in saying that I don't particularly enjoy the triple density lines personally.So I'm speaking of the Titan sync tip, which is just a floating, floating running line. Most of the head is floating and then there's like a 12 foot sink tip at the very end of the head.

Marvin Cash00:08:59

Got it. Well, we cleared that up for everybody. Hopefully we helped.We figured since it's been just kind of high water and cruddy, this would be a good thing to talk about and Then to get to the real listener question, because I would hate to jip Jacob out of a chance to win some cool rouge angling swag or to get some stickers for me, Jacob reached out and he wanted to get your thoughts on the top producing colors for smallmouth based on time of year and watercolor.

Brendan Ruch00:09:27

Yeah, I would say it's going to be more of a watercolor thing than anything.But to be more specific to his question, time of year, like green, green water, I'm going to be fishing black or black and olive in the spring, and that's going to have copper flash, whether it's in the tail or throughout the whole thing. With polar chenille, if I have similar water conditions in the summer, I'm going to be fishing the same fly.And if I have to size down, I'll size down. But I'll start with that like, you know, standard high green water size, which is going to be like 5 inches.And then when we get to a little bit clearer water, this is going to be for the spring, summer, fall, I'm fishing a little bit more natural. So could be white and ginger, cream and ginger white or cream with gray.And then you want to have some with pearl or silver flash and then some without any flash at all. Because some days the fish really seem to key in on flash and some days they seem to shy away from it.

Marvin Cash00:10:36

Well, there you go. And you know, folks, we love questions on the articulate fly. You can email me or DM me on social media, whatever is easiest for you.And if we use your question, I will send you some articulate fly swag. And as I've been saying recently, that generally is going to include a few butcher shop stickers too.And then when you're drawing for some cool stuff from Brendan at the end of the season, and Brendan, before I let you go, I know you're kind of, you know, fishing is a little bit funky until we get back into the fall.So we're actually going to start putting these out once a month through the end of the year, and then we'll kind of start the next year and kind of get back in the normal, like when Brennan's really busy on the water, we'll do them twice a month and when it's a little bit slower, we'll do them once a month.But why don't you let folks know kind of what you have available, where to reach out, where your adoring fans can find you on logjam and all that kind of good stuff?

Brendan Ruch00:11:20

Yeah, if you want to hang out. And I don't really know how to describe Log Jam live if, if you're not familiar with it, but it's.I don't know, it's basically we have friends on there hanging out, tying flies, and hopefully the jokes aren't too inside baseball, but. But yeah, usually it's. It's a fun hang. You got a few watchers. And then we'll post when we have a more legitimate episode coming out.So we, we did one with Russ Madden back over the wintertime and that was pretty good. But yeah, so that's Log Jam fishing company on Instagram. And then my Instagram is Brendan Roche. I'm also on Facebook.And yeah, so if you want to go fishing this summer or fall, just shoot me an email@rooshanglingmail.com and we'll try to get something together and make it happen. Do some bug fishing.

Marvin Cash00:12:15

And do I remember correctly, is log jam 8:35ish on Tuesdays?

Brendan Ruch00:12:20

Yeah, 8:35ish on the dot.

Marvin Cash00:12:23

Every Tuesday on the dot. There you go. Well, folks, as always say this time of the year, first of all, now we got to stay cool.But secondly, you owe it to yourself to get out there and catch a few tight lines, everybody. Tight lines. Brendan.

Brendan Ruch00:12:34

Take care, guys. And don't be afraid of swamp bass this summer. It's good for you.