The last piece of my stillwater arsenal has to be the dry flies. All are custom patterns I keep tinkering with as shortcomings and frailties become pronounced. The Calibaetis mayfly doesn’t help much as it’s seems to be a different color on every lake it inhabits.

I like to position myself on the side of the lake the wind blows towards – as the emergent adults are content to ride the breeze for great distances – instead of popping off the water immediately like a stream borne insect. The breeze will deliver all that food right to me and in the right bay or shallows the fishing can be spectacular.

For most lake mayflies I’ll toss the classic proportions and make special flies tailored for an extended float. A traditional size 16 will get the wing and hackle of a 15 (sometimes even larger if the lake is known gusty) – as the tall wing is what fish see when cruising for prey.

… and it allows me to pick my fly out from the pack, allowing me the courtesy of setting the hook when it’s eaten – rather than yanking when it’s the natural next to mine … On breezy lakes, the tall wing allows me to maintain visual contact despite the fly dipping into a wave trough – increasing my chances of seeing the strike.

I cast about two thirds less than the average fellow, as once positioned on the windward side I’ll usually find the fish cruising at my feet. As that ever-present breeze blows my “sailboat” back towards me I’ll slowly take up the slack and recast only when the fly is within a rod’s length.

It’s flirting with bait fishing, but that extra breadth of hackle and light dressing allows a greased fly to float forever.

I’ve settled on both brown and a grey bodied flies for the same hatch. One will have a distinct brownish appearance, the other will be tied mostly gray – and as the emergence is midday – there’s ample light to discern color. I’ve given up theorizing or second guessing and just make sure I have a couple dozen of each.

The nymph is the easiest part; somewhere between a Pheasant Tail, a Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear, and a Zug Bug is the proper flavor, and like the dry fly it varies a bit each year.

I like the speckled hen saddle wings as they present the perfect opaque silhouette, and when riding among naturals are nearly indistinguishable. Note the oversized wing and hackle mentioned earlier. Once damp those wings can overpower a traditional hackle and flop the fly on its side. The broad footprint of the oversized hackle stabilizes the fly and ensures it’ll ride upright with wings prominent.

All these unknown experimental made-it-yourself flies comes with a hideous burden, after the fellow next to you inquires and you tell him to “try an Adams” – you’re obliged to hand over a double-fistful, it’s the law.

Tags: Adams, stillwater dry flies, oversized wing, speckled hen saddle, Calibaetis mayfly, parachute flies, hairwing, dyed elk, grizzly hackle, fly tying

It was a bit of an imposition, watching the steady upward march of a horde of damselfly nymphs – and realizing I’d never considered my camouflaged legs part of any textbook underwater migration. Science held me in it’s grip until the first slimy little sucker made it past the neckline of my shirt and insisted on molting somewhere near my navel.

… and they swim like true fish, not awkward or ungainly like other aquatic insects. That elongated body with the three-bladed gill tail is put to good use. And it makes perfect sense that a stillwater insect that swims as gracefully as a minnow would have his gills where the tail should be – as the swimming motion would allow those appendages to slurp all the oxygen needed – even more when flight was necessary.

I liken them to Stoneflies of the Lake, larger than most of the Caddis and Mayflies, yet slender and elongated – giving a fly tyer the opportunity to practice his craft with larger hooks and plenty of shank – versus the minutiae that comprises the balance of a fish’s diet.

I don’t favor the traditional “wooden” long-shank mayfly imitation, as a small tuft of marabou just cannot substitute for the graceful swimming motion so characteristic to this species.

Instead I’ll opt for the tail and body as a single unit, coupled with a short shank hook to provide just enough room for lead wire and a wingcase. Three or four strands of medium olive with a like amount of brown over the top gives me a couple of colors that are proven tasty.

Most of the damsel nymphs I’ve fished over are dark Olive – but occasionally I’ll find them in brown. I take my cue from the lake bottom and its weeds – as the naturals are tailored to match. Putting both colors in the wing allows you to remove one later by simply tearing the fibers off – a modification you can do on the water.

Motion is the key, especially when faced with the color dampening effects of deep water, where warm starts to dull and the fish measured in pounds cluster.

Tags: Damselfly nymphs, fly fishing in stillwater, lake flies, fly fishing for trout, marabou, baitfish, graceful swimmer, sink tip, short shank hook

While the balance of nature might be perfection, most of its inhabitants are less so. Us fishermen are often knotted up in our notions of behavior and only underwater footage or other form of proof is needed to get us thinking outside the conventional.

Utah Fly Guides posted a video of Green Drake nymphs struggling to the surface – and as the video plainly demonstrates, they’re tumbling around in the water column and in the unfamiliar medium stability only comes with a solid anchor.

If this is what the fish sees; first a flash of light belly, then a split second of dark back, enduring all that effort to separate colors may be worth the effort. Then again, woven bodies involve considerable pain and suffering and share a certain stiffness coupled with a tendency to rotate around the hook with abuse.

With an upcoming foray into the Pristine scheduled, and a couple of ideas, I brushed the Orange and Pink materials out of the way to see what I could dream up.

As always efficiency is better than painstaking detail, and if they prove successful you’ll be better off with a couple dozen versus a couple period…

I started with the traditional color for the Drakes I’ve fished over in California, and the color of its underbelly. I made a quick blend of 1/2 belly – 1/2 back, and 3/4 belly – 1/4 back, then used all four colors to dub the body in short stages.

The effect is a nice harmony – a color spectrum that shifts from light to dark (in Olives) – and should make both back and belly colors visible to matter what attitude the fish has to the fly.

In watching the video a couple times, I noticed the belly color offers the starkest contrast with the surrounding water – allowing me to pick out the “food” from the bits of leaves rather quickly.

We’ll never know what the trout sees, but transitioning colors in this manner yields no additional complexity and a rather striking end result.

Tags: Green Drakes, fly tying, color transition, trout fishing, blended dubbing, fly tying complexity,

It wasn’t so much the Perfect Storm as it was the perfect sunshine – robbing me of any pretense that I could vanish fishing. The American was running nearly double last year’s flows, which gave momentary pause, but the accumulated chores and yard work was running nearly triple normal.

While I blistered those soft pasty fingers on shovels, lawn mowers, and hedge trimmers, I was framing my response to last week’s revelation that Shad ate in fresh water …

Shad eat in fresh water. They just don’t eat enough.

… and with plenty of the bright, cornea-damaging Shad flies from last season, I’m thinking a fistful of drab and semi-natural looking flies might be that changeup needed on some slow mid-morning.

Add a liberal dose of the Czech style of realistic attractor, throw in some of the time honored Shad colors, and it ought to please the fish and may even lure some half-pounders into biting. All I needed was less blisters on my tying fingers, less water spilling over Folsom Dam, and a smattering of vacation to test all these unknowns.

Locate the fish using traditional patterns and then add a dropper with the experimentals and see whether it’s the semi-attractor or the eyeball wrenching Pink that becomes the preferred fly.

The opportunistic nature of feeding explains why the Shad has a yen for anything bright flung in its direction. Just like small trout rush out to smack the fly first, a large school of Shad probably behaves identically, only with greater urgency – as each fish is competing with 100,000 of its brethren and knows it will fall prey to another if not eaten immediately.

… and if I’d spent most of my existence seining plankton in 300 feet of water, how the hell would I know what freshwater chow looks and acts like?

See it, eat it, or spit it out.

The hard part is marrying the attributes of tiny nymphs to a much larger Shad hook. While the native waters are host to all manner of small fish, and the occasional Hexagenia mayfly, it’s a limited palette. I opted to err on the side of voracious hunger, figuring “buggy” was all that is really needed.

The Underwear River Caddis marries the soft hackle and fur collar to traditional shad orange, it’s an homage to classic shad colors with a bit of trout food chaser.

All are tied on ancient Mustad iron, a 3116A size 7, (2 extra strong, 2X short, Limerick bend). The odd size is exactly between the sizes I fish most – #6, and #8’s, which makes a nice intermediary hook with the properties of both.

All the reports featuring terrestrials allowed me to dust off the old traditional attractors. We’ve added opalescent wing stubs and soft hackle to the classic McGinty, hoping the bright mix of yellow and black might give something a serious mad …

… and for the minnow crowd we assumed a bit of shiny mixed with a lean silhouette would cover all the possible fry that might stumble into a pod of ravenous herring.

The Eastern Bloc featured at right, is a marriage of classic Czech colors with the traditional Shad wet fly. It’ll slim down to a nice minnow shape and features enough dyed black Angelina to offer plenty of eye-catching sparkle.

The other dozen patterns I’ll hold until we start the research in earnest, which will be shortly after the shovel blisters recede and expose the Lilly-white paper pushing flesh beneath.

Precious fly tier’s fingers, don’t mess with ‘em …

Tags: American River, shad flies, Czech Nymphs, Wet Flies, limerick bend, Mustad fly hooks, McGinty, fly fishing blog, soft hackle, fly tying