Stacy Seethaler

Stacy Seethaler displayed a nice Allegheny River smallmouth bass taken on a finesse-sized tube jig.

When fishing conditions get tough — be it from unsettled weather, intense fishing pressure, marginal water clarity, etc. — often the approach to scratch out a few bites is by downsizing the lures you present.

Consider a trip a few days ago when Matt Seethhaler and his wife, Stacy, joined me on the Allegheny River for a smallmouth bass outing. As has been the case for the past several weeks, we were dealing with high, discolored water, the product of an extraordinarily wet fall.

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