News from Blue Ribbon Flies

2012 Catalog Entries.
Matching The Hatch

By Dick Rohrbaugh

Photo By Bob Ross

We all know the phrase -- and perhaps the concept as well. A lot of times it is obvious what is happening and figuring out which fly to use is not too difficult. Even if you do not know the name of the critter that is hatching, if you get close in size and profile you can usually catch a few fish. Of course when I was a kid fishing the Madison River in Montana I knew nothing about insects and had never heard of matching a hatch. I just fished a gray hackle peacock all day every day and caught all the fish I wanted. However with the fishing pressure most blue ribbon trout steams get nowadays that strategy is a thing of the past. Knowing the insects, their habitat, behavior and availability to trout can make the difference between getting fish and getting skunked. It also helps if you know the river and know what to expect. Those who fish the Deschutes regularly, for example, can tell you that if you get there on a warm late September or early October evening you are going to find October caddis fluttering all over the place. Ditto with baetis on a rainy day in the fall. It happens that way every year and so you go prepared.

A big part of being able to match a hatch well is knowing the way rise forms vary with the insects the fish are taking. For example, fast, aggressive rises in the late evening in mid-summer are almost always emerging caddis. A soft hackle or caddis emerger in the film usually gets fish while the elk hair caddis (adult) that worked earlier in the day (it imitates an egg-laying female) draws nothing. The rise forms are the key. Of course if you are on the Madison in Montana those aggressive rises might also be fish feeding on epeorus - the fastest hatching of all mayflies. They too produce splashy rises and if the fish are selective on them rather than the caddis that can be emerging at the same time it can be a fishless evening if you don't figure it out. By contrast, deliberate, "sipping" rises near dark often mean that pale morning dun spinners are falling. They frequently come down right before or right after dark and fishing on them can be spectacular. On the Madison epeorus spinners often fall at the same time, in the same way, though an olive or rusty spinner pattern will usually match either falling insect so it is rarely necessary to know which bug is falling. You just have to recognize the type of rise a spinner fall produces. A good case in point of all this happened three weeks ago when Craig Mathews (the owner of the Blue Ribbon Fly Shop in West Yellowstone) and I were on the Madison together for an evening of dry fly action. We are neighbors and occasionally fish the river together in the evening when the crowds are gone. The action is right in front of my house. (OK, OK, I know this is tough duty!)

As the evening started (around 6 p.m.), we saw the aggressive rises typical of emerging caddis. By late August on the Madison the caddis action is almost over for the year, but we caught a few small and medium sized fish just below some of our favorite riffles. That action continued until about 7:30 p.m. when all of a sudden the rise forms changed completely. We began seeing sippers in the calm stretches and looking up could see against the fading light all kinds of epeorus spinners in the air. As they began to come down we switched flies (and water type) and immediately began catching nice trout on olive spinners. It was great action - for about 15 minutes. Then it stopped. It was the tag end of the epeorus season as well and the few still around provided only that brief opportunity near the end of the day.

As we were trying to decide what to do next, Craig noticed a head and tail rise from a very large fish in the pool just upstream. Head and tail rises at this time of year usually mean midges. So with a quick change to 6x leader and size 20 and 22 zelon midges (a pattern Craig developed that is the easiest tie in the world and wonderfully effective when fish are midging) we got into the action all over again. Lots of large fish were rising all over the pool and they took the zelon midges with regularity. Now I don't know about you, but for me large fish on tiny surface flies is about as good as it gets. You don't hook every fish on flies that small, but the challenge is terrific and success is what keeps dry-fly junkies like me coming back. It was a great 30 minutes. We fished to steadily rising fish until dark, catching our share, but all the time oblivious to the fact that we had crossed the river to get to that spot and had some dicey wading in bad light to get back to our home side of the river. Of course Craig just had to stay for one more cast and one more fish, so I decided to cross ahead of him and wait for him on the far bank.

I got there and turned around just in time to see Craig begin to cross. A few steps in and he stumbled over a large, unseen rock. I think they call it "floating your hat." What could I say? It was hilarious. A perfect end to a perfect evening of "matching the hatch."