I'm not sure of the insect type, as it was early in my ff experience but I
saw a hatch on Wilson Creek one time. The bugs were comin' to the top of
the water and looked like popcorn poppin'--HONESTLY. Their wings would
unfold (?), they would float with the current momentarily and then fly off.
It was really neat, as I had never seen anything like it, and I wasn't sure
what was happenin' at first. Finally it dawned on me what was taking place.
I had only read about hatches, in books, at that time.

I have since seen many bugs emerge in numbers, but never like my first
experience.

Mark
"rw" wrote in message
m...
riverman wrote:

You can use the bird situation to model the 'diagonal rising zone'. If
the
emergers were coming up at a certain spot in the river, and there was as
light breeze (say, blowing southwards), then the birds would not all be
congregating above that spot on the river, at all heights. The ones who
were
feeding low to the water would be right above that spot, but the duns
that
got past those birds would be blown to the south as they rose. So you'd
expect the birds at higher elevations to be farther to the south. This
is
the 'diagonal rising zone' of the duns.

In the water, its the same. Imagine a deep pool of slow water, with an
outlet on the downstream side. If there are rising nymphs throughout the
water column in the deep pool, then there are nymphs getting sucked into
the
outlet current at all levels. But, a few feet downstream from the pool,
there won't be any nymphs at the bottom; they will have risen a few
inches,
so there will be an 'empty zone' along the bottom of the river from that
point on down. Dragging a nymph through that zone will be useless. The
'diagonal rising zone' is the diagonal zone where the nymphs are,
starting
at the bottom near the pool and rising to the surface several meters
downstream, depending on the current.

That clears it up. As I understand what you're saying, the current is
taking the emerging nymphs downstream as they rise through the water
column, so you find them at different depths depending on how far
downstream they are from the bottom.

Fishing emergers is something that's mostly beyond my experience. I've
had some success with midge emergers on the San Juan, but I mostly try
to dead-drift nymphs near the bottom. Willi is the by far the best
emerger flyfisher I've ever seen. I've watched him catch some big fish
that way, when everyone else was getting frustrated fishing dry flies.
It seems to me like something that has to be learned with much
experience and great attention to what's going on with the bugs and the
fish.

I'm going to offer a question for ROFF: What are the coolest hatches
you've ever seen? Here's my list:

- Brown Drakes on Silver Creek, Idaho. These huge mayflies (#8) make a
phenomenal spinner fall in the evening, and continue through the night.
You can catch fish in the pitch black of night, striking by ear.

- Morning Tricos on Silver Creek. Another spinner fall. It requires a
dead calm, or the tiny bugs are blown off the water. The fish feed on
pods, hoovering in rafts of bugs. You fish downstream, aiming your fly
into a mouth.

- Salmonflies on Marsh Creek and the Middle Fork of the Salmon. Huge
gyrocopter-like bugs that always look on the verge of crashing.

- Black caddis on the Bighorn. Keep your mouth closed.

- Green drakes on the Big Wood.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.