Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Photos and Thoughts of the Last Few Trips

The tools......................


The river, high and off-color, which has been the norm this spring......... 


A wild fish............


A stocked fish.......


A fly that continues to puzzle me: why does it work?...............


The hatches - sulphurs - have been epic some evenings, and the trout, more often than not, have been only marginally interested in them.  One evening a couple of days ago, there were two different species of sulphurs hatching, and they were on the water and in the air in tremendous numbers.   We're guessing the high water levels and limited visibility have hampered the trout's ability to see the flies on the water above them.......why else would they be passing up the thousands of flies moving along on the current half-submerged and crippled.  Easy targets to say the least............

So, when a fish did rise, we tossed a simple snowshoe rabbit foot sulphur dry on the end of 6X tippet, and in most cases we hooked the fish and landed it.  Otherwise, we fished a soft-hackled sulphur emerger and did well....we also continued to experiment with Walt's Worm, which seems to be some kind of trout candy .........and we are still scratching our heads.  In fact, we are quickly going bald! 

The soft-hackle sulphur we are fishing is the same pattern we wrote about for the hendrickson, but this one is a size #16 and 18, with primrose colored dubbing for the thorax. Tie some up and give them a go!

And don't forget to sharpen those hooks!          

3 comments:

Jersey Jimmy said...

I fished Sunday evening. I waited and waited for the Sulphers to show and they did marginally. No rises though until 8:40pm. Then a few sporadic.
I tried to throw my comparadun and fouled the tippet. Thank goodness I had the headlamp on. I retied the tippet and threw. A few small fish ignored me. Then to my right, I heard a splash-not a slurp. I thought this fish must be taking emergers. Well, too late to retie-it must have been 8:50pm and the sun was pretty much down.
I floated that dun about 12 times over the area and bent down to water level to see the wing.
somewhere around 15 drifts, he took. 14" wild brown. Yellow, beautiful and pissed.
Released him, and went to the car. He made up for a crappy night.
On another note, I have been catching big smallies above KLG, and had never done that before this year. A bad sign in my opinion for the smaller wild fish.

Anonymous said...

That soft hackle emerger with the sulphur color is a KILLER FLY, I've been using it exclusively and catching every fish i see and lots i don't. The "creek" has some big fish in it now, and a new addition to the lower reaches, wild brook trout!!!!!Usually they stay to the upper end, but now are moving further down, hope that is a good sign.

Mr.Q said...

That fly that is keeping you up at night....doo you think the fish my mistake it for a cased caddis? On that has lost ots grip on the bottom and is tumbling through the water column, Perhaps?