Quite good. I hit a short stretch of water in the middle of town tonight. I fished a size 8 yellow simulator, and rose in the neighborhood of a dozen fish to it in about 90 minutes of fishing. The actual landing of fish was significantly less (I think I got about 4 fish to hand) because many of the fish that rose to the fly were rather small (4″-7″). The little fish will come up a smack a large dry but more often than not they can not get in their mouth with one bite. I did raise a good half dozen larger fish, but with skillful line handling and superb setting techniques I managed to prevent any from successfully taking the fly.
Archive for May, 2007
The hatch is still going. On Tuesday last Tom and I tried a stretch of the river just outside of town.
Not many green drakes were visible in the air but that did not stop the fish from taking the dry.
Tom was happily catching fish on a green drake pattern, so I switched up a bit to
see what the fish would take. I tired a large (size8) yellow simulator pattern, but it did not generate much interest. I then switched to a size 12 yellow parachute stonefly pattern.
It was well received by the fish.
Lately I have noticed that late in the evening the fish sem to be switching to a caddis pattern, so I stitched over to a size 12 Elk Hair Caddis. It worked just fine, but Tom continued to catch fish on the green drake pattern which suggests the fish were not being particularly selective that night..
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Just the other day I was fishing with Dan and his buddy Mark. They had been out the evening before and done quite well on large yellow stone fly patterns. We returned to the same water the next evening, but we arrived a bit earlier in the day.
Mark heading upstream to the water he did very well in the night before, while Dan and I hit a nice pool just down around the corner.
Dan started fishing the water with the large stone he was using the might before and covered the water well, but did not raise a fish.
When Dan gracefully yielded the water to me, I covered it with a Green Drake pattern since I knew that the drakes were coming off starting about 3:00 pm while the stone are out later in the day.
It worked, and I rose several fish in the next few casts.
The point is that just because a fly worked well one night does not mean that it will perform equally well the next day. Two main factors come into play to effect this.
One: On the Upper Sac the last few hours of light are the magic time, often any well presented fly will work, the fish are in a feeding mode and will take most anything.
Two: At different times of the day different bugs are available to the fish and they will often key on the most numerous bugs at a specific time.
I have been talking about yellow stonefly patterns.
It is much more common to fish this river with a golden stone fly pattern in some flavor of orange. But this year I have noticed that the stones that are coming off right now have a very yellow body. I think that they are still a golden stone, but why the usual amount of yellow in them I do not know. We will see if the color changes as we get into the meat of the hatch which should happen in the next two weeks. .
Well, I guess I had better not make any promises about when updates will happen to this blog. Last entry said I would report on the following Saturday, and here it is five weeks later,
time flies when you are having fun.
I have been all over the place in the last five weeks, looking at and fishing a bunch of the local waters. Most recently I spent a few days on McCloud Reservoir. Many anglers do not try still water fishing, but it can be very productive fishing buggers on sinking lines and nymphs on floating lines in a lake. Main thing you need is a knowledge of the lake and where the schools of fish like to hang out. Once you know the best areas, it is just a matter of fishing each until you locate the schools. I have about a half dozen spot on McCloud Reservoir that I commonly fish and I can always find fish in at least a few of them. On the really good days there will be fish in all of them.
So given that the fishing is productive the other nice aspect of lake fishing is working out of the boat. This provides fishing opportunities to anglers who are not interested in the rigors of a walk and wade trip.
The latest news is the fishing on the Upper Sac. Went out last night with Tom Chandler (of the Trout Underground fame) and stumbles across a nice green drake hatch. Rumors of a green drakes on the river have been going around for a week or so, and I have been doubting the idea. Too much believing the hatch charts. I was convinced that it was too early for a Green Drake hatch. Showed me. Now I gotta eat a little humble pie.
It is interesting that the Drakes I was seeing last night were a little smaller that the “normal “ Green Drake hatch on the Upper Sac. The June Green Drakes are a good size 10 to 8, whereas the ones last night were more like a size 12ish. I did see one larger drake flying thru the air that looked like a size 8 but the rest were more like a 12. Tom took some nice macro shots of one that I caught and has posted it on the Trout Underground. It is hard to tell size from a photo but I guess it at a fat size 12. I suspect that this is a hatch of Drunella Doddsi rather than the Drunella Grandis. I have done a little bit of internet research but have not found a easy way to tell them apart except by size.
This page talks about the Doddsi genus as being 25% smaller than the Grandis:
The Mckenzie Page
So that’s my story and I am sticking to it (for now).
Any entomologists wanna weight here?
