Dave Wolak grew up fishing the creeks and rivers of the Northeast for smallmouths with everything from flies to worms. To be honest, it was a rare to catch a largemouth in most of these creeks, simply because the smallmouths dominated in that habitat. This weekend, while wading a large creek in NC, I was reminded of the significant differences in approach when targeting the creek largemouth of the South. After years of walking through the pools in search the two species, I’ve narrowed it down to three main rules that will immediately put you in the bass-catching ballgame, regardless of if your search is for the brown ones or the green ones. Livies Are Not Always the Answer: Smallmouths are much bigger suckers for live bait than largemouths. If fished correctly, hellgrammites, crawfish, stone cats, or chubs can literally catch every smallmouth in the pool before they get wise. It’s just not the same with creek largemouths. There are a variety of reasons for that, most of which revolve around how largemouths set up in current vs. smallmouths. Point being, bait is just not the same guaranteed fallback plan with largies as it is with creek smallies. I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t carry some for largemouths. I’m just saying I wouldn’t hit a largemouth creek without some reliable lures and flies.