whats your largest fish caught on smallest fly

Jim wrote:
On Sun, 16 May 2004 13:29:40 +0800, "tony weall"
wrote:


thesize of some of these midges blew me away, i have a argument with a
friend of mine who believes you can only catch small fish on these small
flies but i reckon that larger fish would take them too(hes from new zealand
they only use shark hooks there)


As a Kiwi I had to rise to the bait and not let this slur go
unanswered. :-)
My largest fish was 8.5 lb Tongariro rainbow jack on a #14 white
caddis. This is not unusal on the Tongariro though. Why would you want
to tie #20 and #22 flies, which I imagine would be very fiddlerly,
when a #14 shark hook does the job just fine?


In the States we have a number of fisheries called tailwaters. These
tailwaters are the result of an upstream, bottom release dam. Since the
water is released from the bottom of the dam, the temperature in the
river is constant all year round. The releases are also rich in
sediments because the water is drawn from the bottom of the reservoir.
This type of river is very fertile and the environment leads to an
ecosystem that has very dense populations of insects but with very few
different species insects. Many of these tailwaters have two to three
thousand catchable trout (some are as high as 5000) per mile. On many of
these tailwaters, small midges make up the vast majority of the trouts'
diet. These midges are so prolific that the rivers produce many large
fish. The midges commonly run from a size 20 down to sizes that you
can't copy with an artificial fly. Flies in a size 22 and 24 are
commonly used.

Personally I've caught numerous trout over 20 inches on flies size 20
and smaller, as have most people that have fished these tailwaters with
any regularity. Here's a picture of the largest I've heard of caught on
such a small fly. It was caught in Colorado on a size 22 hare's ear.

http://www.coloradofishing.net/ft_taylor3.htm

Here's another big one It was 31.5 inches long with a 24 inch girth. It
was caught in the San Juan River on a size 22 larva pattern.

http://www.ifly4trout.com/images/31_5browntrout.jpg

Willi