Back to your question. Since this class of bugs is so important on my
home river, I fish it alot and use a variety of flies. How I fish it
depends on what part of the hatch the fish are concentrating on. When
there are bugs out but no surface activity, a dead drifted PT usually
works. They seem less fussy in terms of fly type, and to some degree
size, at this stage partly because they're often feeding in faster
water. If they're up in the water column or making splashy rises (this
is generally in areas of less current) a wet hackle or an RS2 emerger
type pattern works well. I generally fish them on a dropper under a dry
generally dead drifted but sometime the fish will key in on a swing.
However, a skittering fly generally doesn't work. When they feeding on
top, sometimes they key in on emergers in the film and sometimes on the
duns. You can usually see if they're taking duns by following some duns
on the surface and see if they're taken or ignored. Unless there's wind
pushing them around, they usually want a totally dead drifted fly. The
three types of flies I fish on top are CDC comparaduns, parachutes and
standard hackled dries.

Willi


Thanx for the useful info I ll be using it on the Missouri any day. I
ve always been a little confused as to why they wont take a nicely
drifted fly but will then hit it as Ilet it drag looking for the next
place to cast too MT