TR- Bugs

( Note: My camera somehow got the color balance set on "Vivid". Most
of the pictures came out looking pretty Xtreme. So I greyscaled them.
Not trying to go artsy-fartsy, although flowing water does look cool
in B&W.)

The River still being higher than I like, I made the 30 mile drive
over to the "Mayfly" River.

There was a car at the bridge I wanted to start from. There has been a
car there every time I've fished the river this year. Desiring to fish
downstream in the high water I pulled up and parked behind the white
van anyway. I went to the center of the bridge to see if there was
anyone in sight. There wasn't, but after a minute or two a alder
branch came floating downstream, so I assumed that the van's driver
was up there somewhere. I wadered up and headed down.

The water was running a few inches higher than normal but the
visibility was fine. There were bugs everywhere. Caddis, midges,
mayflies, stoneflies... and mosquitoes. While I had gotten there to
late to see the usual early afternoon March Brown emergence, there
were at least three types of mayflies in the process of hatching,
mating and dying. There was a solid emergence of Sulfurs, a sparse
spinner fall of a small, thin bodied reddish brown mayfly, with
extremely long, flamboyant tails and a smattering of BWO's. I went
with a March Brown dry, thinking that if the hatch had come off on
schedule the fish still might be imprinted on them. The fly caught
fish from the get-go. Nothing huge, but fat, cold little fish.
Healthy.


After a short wade I came to the part of the river that at, one time,
epitomized to me what a trout stream should look like. The water had
flowed against a long bank of small hemlocks and balsams, undercutting
their roots. Before the landowner clear cut the woods behind them, the
forest had stretched off darkly, looking as wild as you could expect a
second or third cut forest to look. The channel here is deep and a
little fast. Fish might be anywhere from bank to bank.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...MG_0093a-1.jpg

The March Brown was lost to a high hemlock branch. I tied on Sulfur
Sparkle Dun. The fish were less enthusiastic about that, although I
did get some takes when I pulled it upstream. The river made a few
curves and emptied into a long run. I stopped there and watched the
fish rise. While there were Sulfurs coming off a few at a time the
fish weren't rising to them. Cutting off the Sparkle Dun I tied on the
fly I tied for a Fly Swap this Spring, the pretentiously named
Pheasant Tail Soft Hackle Parachute.
http://www.wisflyfishing.com/cgi-bin...num=1237727753

Lo and behold, it caught fish. Not every, or even most, of the rising
fish that were cast to, but enough so that I think it might be worth
having a few in my fly box.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...MG_0094a-1.jpg

Thinking the fish might be taking emerging caddis I tied on a Hares
Ear soft hackle. But the fish weren't very impressed by that either. I
fished down to the alder slot at the end of the run.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../IMG_0098a.jpg

Fish were rising in the slot and in the wider water beyond. Still
thinking the fish might be dining on something other than the Sulphurs
I tied on a Snowshoe Hare Caddis (basically an Elk Hair Caddis with
tan snowshoe hare's foot for a wing). This turned out to be the
ticket. Fish would take the fly dead drifted, skittered or brought
back wet. I think it was a good generalist match to both the caddis,
which were starting to swarm in mating flights and, with the yellowish
tint of its body, the Sulfurs that kept popping up. I fished
downstream, picking up almost every fish I saw rising, including some
of the nicest so far this trip.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../IMG_0096a.jpg

A brief rain shower caused me to pull out the rain jacket. The
additional protection also kept the few Off resistant, kamikaze
mosquitoes at bay, so I left it on even after the rain passed through.
It was getting close to 7p.m. when all hell broke lose, bugwise. The
caddis swarms had coalesced into into a river blanketing phenomena.
Above the small caddis blanket, there hovered a larger cream bodied
caddis, like WWII bombers above their fighter support. Sulfurs kept
showing up. And out of the trees the March Browns came fluttering,
some flying paired together in connubial bliss (if bugs can feel
bliss).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...MG_0106a-2.jpg
A Sulfur


The Snowshoe Caddis was getting fairly used up. So I snipped it and
tied on a Catskill style March Brown. The fish loved it even though I
didn't see more than a couple March Browns actually on the water.

Fishing down through the runs I noticed it was getting dark. Thinking
another rain shower was headed my way, I checked my watch. 8:15!! An
hour and a half had passed in what I had asumed was 20 minutes or so.
I had hoped to make it another quarter mile downstream to a couple
large pools to catch the Sulfur spinner fall at dusk. There was no way
I was going to make it now. The Sulfurs spinners were everywhere,
although they hadn't hit the water yet and the March Brown dry was
still taking fish.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../IMG_0111a.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlnNj_vKj_o

I stumbled down river still picking up an occasional fish.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../IMG_0108a.jpg

Right after I snapped the picture my figuratively used "stumbled
down" of the last sentence became literal. A foot placed on the edge
of a basketball sized rock found me on hands and knees in a couple of
feet of water. My camera case was still open and while I pulled it out
of the water as soon as I could, the case was still full of river. I
popped out the memory card and batteries and blew off as much water as
possible. The camera didn't look soaked inside but my picture taking
for the night was over. The camera has been sitting on my warm, old
style CRT monitor all night. I'll leave it there for another day
before I power it up and see if it survived.

After emptying out the pockets of my rain jacket and checking my vest
for dropped items I fastfished down through the evening. Above a small
rapids, after catching a couple small fish, I became distracted by
something (not an unusual occurrence). Out of the corner of my eye I
noticed a slight disturbance, nothing like a full rise, and tightened
up. A large fish pulled back and shot from bank to bank below me.
After a couple of minutes though I had him next to me. The fly was
hooked at the very tip of the snout of the biggest brookie I'd caught
this year, maybe 14 inches or more. I fumbled to get the cell phone
out of its baggie to try to get a picture in the dim light but with a
final splash the fish was gone.

I worked myself down to the pools where I had wanted to fish the
Sulfur spinnerfall. All the bugs, the caddis, the mayflies, even the
midges had disappeared. The river was still visible, its surface
reflecting the silver sky of a cloudy Northern evening. But no fish
rose to hatching bugs or dimpled to dying ones. Another quarter hour
of fishless casting and I hung it up, snipped off the fly, reeled in
the line and walked the trail out to the road and to the mile long
hike back to the bridge and car.

The white van was gone when i got there. it was full dark, 10:07 on
the clock. I drove home, dodging deer, fox and raccoons.

This is it, boys and girls. The heart of the season up here. While the
trout season may be five months long, these two weeks of late May/
early June are why I tie flies in the Winter, drool over rods and
reels on eBay and neglect my yard, dogs and family for a good half
month. There will be good fishing after the Sulfurs are gone. At some
point this summer I'll be fighting a two pound smallmouth and wonder
what exactly was so great about trout fishing in May. But that just
means I'll have forgotten then what I know now. Nothing is better,
nowhere else is better than to be on the water... now.


hth

g.c.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2..._0095a-2-1.jpg

nice report, George!
Tom