Slow day turned fast and furious at sunset

I was on the river yesterday for most of the day. I first went out in the morning and caught one rock bass (about 8"). Shortly after I caught the rock bass, I left the river; that was about 10:00 am. We got a pretty hard rain around 11:00. I expected that the rain to blow the river out. To my surprise, it did not. The flow was a up a little, but the water was still clear with about 36" of visibility. I was back on the water by 2:00. The water was so low and clear that the fishing was very tough. I only had one strike all afternoon and was beginning to get discouraged. I don't usually catch many fish mid-afternoon, but I always manage to find a few. At about 8:00 the sun had gone behind the trees casting shadows all over the water. The water came alive with fish begining to feed in the comfort of the shadows. When I noticed this, I knew the fishing was going to be good in the last hour or so before it got too dark to walk out (another story all together). I found a nice spot where a feeder creek comes into the main channel of the river, the bottom of the river was strewn with rocks. I began to see baitfish jumping out of the water, I knew there would be an aggressive, hungry bass just below where I saw the bait jump. I made sure to keep my distance as I didn't want to spook these actively feeding fish. I cast about ten feet upstream from the action let my fly sink and started striping it in with a quick motion. On the second or third cast, there was a violent strike and a splash; fish on! When I brought the fish to hand I was a little dissapointed because it was smaller than I expected based on the jolting strike and all the splashing and jumping the fish had done when hooked. I quickly released the fish and got my fly back in the water looking to capitalize on the feeding frenzy going on in front of me. Next cast I missed a strike. Shortly after that I hooked up again, with a bigger fish (I got a good look at it when it jumped near me). After a breif fight, that fish spit the hook and was an "early release". At this point it was basically dark out, I was beginning to have a hard time seeing my line on the water. I knew I only had a couple of minutes left before I had to walk out. The fish were still on a feeding frenzy, so it was worth a few more casts. Just to the left of where I hooked the fish that spit the hook, I saw a fish breaching the water repeatedly ambushing baitfish just beneath the surface. I placed the perfect cast just upstream of the action, waited, waited, and started to strip the fly with a slower more erradic retreive. Just as I was stripping the fly through the targeted area it felt as if I had snagged bottom. I set the hook and saw a hog of a smallmouth bass breach the water in a high flying acrobatic display of resistance. This fish put up an exciting fight jumping several times, charging this way and that way. Finally I brought the fish to hand. This was one of the largest smallmouth bass I have ever caught in a river, possibly the largest. The fish was no longer than other large bass I have caught in the past, but it was thick! This fish ate really well, and was probably very old. I took a couple of picture of this fish which are below.