Fly Fishing Late Season Hatches-Part 1

Late summer and autumn are my favorite times -or time - to fish. In my mind the two blend together. Starting in mid-August, the days get noticeably shorter. The summer crowds of tourists begin to thin out. The weather begins to turn, and the change, though barely noticeable at first, is pleasant. The frenzied pace of running a fly shop and guiding business during trout season slows down a little. I have more unhurried time to fish. Besides, this is the most beautiful time of the year - to me, anyway - and the fishing can be terrific.

I sometimes wonder if the hatch-chasers of summer know what they're missing. There are plenty of times, when I'm taking fish after fish on a stretch of stream that I have to myself, a stretch that would see plenty of competition for fewer hookups just a few weeks earlier, I hope they never find out. With a little knowledge of some neglected or misunderstood hatches, suitable flies, and some practical tactics, they could "clean up" after the disappointments of dog-day summer fishing.

Throughout much of the Rocky Mountain West, summer fishing slows down gradually until it is reduced to a few trout amid the whitefish sipping tricos, a few more responding to ceaseless flailing with hoppers, a long afternoon lull, and then, if we're lucky, a five-minute caddis grab at dusk. That's when a lot of anglers quit for the season. Things could change for them if they'd stick around.

The tricos will still be there when the water cools a little.

When water conditions are right, big trout will sit and work a trico spinner fall for hours. They don't eat a few and quit. They keep coming up again, and again, and again. If you don't slap the water silly and put them down, you can keep casting to them again, and again, and again.

The biggest objections to trico fishing are surmountable. The first goes like this: "I can't see to get them little-bitty things on my leader." That's why fly shops carry clip-on or paste-on magnifiers, and drugstores carry racks of magnifying reading glasses. Find the solution that works best for you. Swallow your pride, and do whatever it takes. You may feel a little silly for not having done something in this area sooner, as the amount of enjoyment that it brings back into the sport can be considerable. Don't be afraid to try threaders and knot-tying tools, either. If it helps, it helps.

Objection number two: "I can't see them little bitty things on the water." Well, neither can I. I fish them, though, and have plenty of fun. When I lose sight of the fly I use the Stranahan Bucket Method of Strike Detection. If I see a rise within a bucket's circumference of where I think my fly might be, I come up. I've learned to laugh at the misses, and I know that the law of averages draws me closer to a hit with each one. It's not all over with one miss. Like I said, the fish keep rising, and rising.

It helps, or is downright essential, to time and cast to the rhythm of the rise. That raises the law of averages in your favor, and helps "locate" the fly in your mind's eye if you can't see it.

Another trick is to fish a parachute dry fly ahead of the trico spinner. The white upright wing of a size eighteen is plenty visible under many conditions. Where that doesn't work, as with glare or foam lines, try a fly with a hot pink wing like the one I've come to call Jan's Adams. Go down through the eye of the parachute dry with about an eighteen-inch section of 6X. The parachute is free to roam up and down this upper piece of tippet, reducing drag. Tie on another eighteen-inch section of 6X or 7X using a triple surgeon's knot. Tie your trico spinner on the end of that. Your "bucket" now has a center that you can see. The upper fly should be small and sparse. You'll have to weigh for yourself, in given situations, the factors of visibility versus drag.

Objection number three: "How do you hook a big one on such a little fly?" This question has two answers. First, you hook ‘em between the teeth. Seriously. There is a tough membrane there. Hook a big trout in that membrane, as you're likely to when fishing a trico spinner, and he's yours unless something else goes wrong. He won't throw the hook.

Second, use a rod that has a delicate enough tip to strike 6X and 7X without overstriking or breaking off fish. That eliminates a lot of big-name rods on today's market, and could touch off a debate that I don't want to enter here. My own best rod for this kind of fishing is a delicate piece of bamboo. It is a delight to cast at fishing ranges although it isn't "light" or "fast" enough by a lot of people's standards. When I'm using it and get a take on an emerger or small spinner, I seldom miss. I expect to hook up, and when I do, it's sweet and satisfying. This, I say to myself, is trout fishing.

An often-missed opportunity with tricos is the emergence, which occurs at dusk. September evening caddis grabs can be intense. So can the emergence of mahogany duns. It is possible to be on water that hosts all three hatches and see a profusion of caddis in the air, mahogany duns coming off with mechanical regularity, plenty of fish working lightly on the surface, and not a take. Ever been there?

Tricos hatch with little fanfare, and can fly off unnoticed when bigger, more spectacular bugs are present. The "obvious" hatch may not be the one that the fish are working. Trout are unconcerned with the caddisflies fluttering and buzzing around behind our glasses, in our ears, and up our noses if they can't get to them. They'll take easy-to-eat trico nymphs or emerging duns instead.

One worthwhile trick is to fish a size eighteen or twenty black mayfly nymph on a trailer below whatever parachute dry fly seems appropriate during the evening. Rig it up as described for the spinner/parachute setup. If it buys you a few extra strikes, keep it on. If it doesn't work, take it off.

For the emerging duns, a trico Sparkle Dun with its light-colored semi-circle of wing showing above the water line is surprisingly visible at dusk. Position is important in this kind of fishing. If possible, fish in the dark reflections of trees on the water - not in the reflected low glare of the sky.

When fishing trico spinners, as with any major hatch, it is a good idea not to get stuck with only one pattern. Be prepared for varying light and water conditions. Carry an alternate to the "hot" or most popular pattern in heavily fished water. Trout can get pattern-shy when they've seen the same thing again and again. Carry an all-black male pattern, and a light olive dun abdomen/black thorax female pattern. Size twenty is a good place to start, but larger and smaller tricos can be available in the same watershed - to say nothing of regional variations throughout the country.

If you tie your own, you might want to try a hackle-wing spinner, using just a few wraps of oversized hackle, trimmed on the bottom only. Leave the tails long (look at the naturals, not the proportion charts in fly tying books). Make a clear distinction between the slender abdomen and beefy thorax of the natural. Trout seem to key in on this skinny abdomen/beefy thorax silhouette. When you're trying to get them to take your imitation amid the glut of naturals on the water, it doesn't hurt to give ‘em what they want.

Chuck's Hackle-wing Trico Spinner

Tail: light dun hackle fibers or micro-fibbets, 3X body length

Abdomen: black or light olive dun dubbing, or stripped hackle quill

Thorax: peacock herl

Hackle: White, light dun or bleached grizzly, 2X long to match proportion of natural trico wings, trimmed on bottom only