Tuesday, February 14, 2012

A Few Flies for February

The trout fishing has been good in recent weeks despite the erratic weather.  We'll have a couple of days of warm, early spring like temps, and then a few that are much colder and windy.  The one constant has been the river levels and clarity, which have been great for this time of the year.  It also helps that there is almost no snow on the ground or ice on the waters.  The lack of ice or snow allows river temps to rise a little during the day, which compels the bugs to become active, and in turn, the fish to feed.

The hot fly right now has been a chimarra caddis larva (see our recent post/video on my pattern).  There are also lots of little black stones moving about the water column, and on bright sunny days on the banks and in the air.  And finally, on some waters we have been seeing some good hatches of blue-winged olives - Baetis sp. - mostly in the afternoon.  All of the aforementioned will continue to be active for the next several weeks or more.  And don't forget midges, they will hatch even on the coldest days and will at times bring the trout up to the surface to feed on them.

Here are a few of my little black stone fly subsurface patterns.  One is a simple black pheasant tail and starling soft hackle, the other is a variation of my pumpkin head - here we use a black bead head and black pheasant tail, other wise the pattern is the same.
  

Here is one of my favorite blue-winged olive dries - a no-hackle style pattern that sits low in the surface film much like the naturals.


And I received this photo of a nice rainbow that Mr. Q took yesterday on a hare's ear nymph - so much for matching the hatch!


Sharpen your hooks!

4 comments:

Mr. Q said...

Caught several (5) on a #16 hare's ear. The fish were very active. That was one and a half hours in one hole...! sucker landed too :)

Brk Trt said...

I love those soft hackles.

Matt Grobert said...

Mr. Q - Way to go!!
Brk Trt - They are great, adn fun to tie. Starling is particularly useful since its dark and you can tie them small.

Anonymous said...

Great looking flies!

Nice choice on rods.:)