Congrats to Matt Bennett with his fine, fine blacktail shiner and his glorious celebration of all that is smolt. Says he: “from the Lone Star: I humbly present my Smolt of the Month Entry for the July Contest. I caught this dude last year while doing some fall trout fishing on our one and only (althout a bit artificial) tailwater trout fishery in Texas, the Guadalupe. I’ve been trying to diversify my species on fly a bit, so I was ecstatic to get this little guy to hand. He’s a Blacktail Shiner, and ate a #22 spanflex midge emerger.
Hope I win! Those water bottles are sweet!” Indeed, they are.

And where else in the flyfish world does one get to revel in the majesty of a landed baitfish? Nowhere else, of course. FFJ and Kleen Kanteen are proud to award Mr. Bennett his winning package of a customized FFJ/KK limited editon Kanteen in either brushed or polished finishes, and featuring no paint, no plastic and no bs, as well as a subscription to The Flyfish Journal. As Mr. Bennett is already a three-year subscriber, he can either extend his own or gift this one.

While strong consideration was given to the muskie, the peacock, Capt Cloudveil with his bass and homeboy holding the brookie in his mouth, in the end, a minnow beat them all. There was some discussion amongst the judges regarding the definition of “smolt”. To be clear, the official SMOTM stance on the matter is to obfuscate as much as possible. That is to say, we take the broad view of what is smolt: While the muskie is clearly more teenager than toddler, and the shiner is likely full grown… we really don’t care. And neither should you. Smolt simply equals small, non-adult, or whatever the hell you want it to. See, it all makes sense.

Thanks to all for participating, this was our most popular SMOTM to date and we will keep the love alive. Send any and all August entries in and we will be posting later this week. With several already in, don’t hold back. Get those tiny little bastards in here. Send to smotm@theflyfishjournal.com, and we will be announcing the next winner of the FFJ/KK colab package in early September with updates along the way.