It appears what is working depends on where you are on the creek or maybe what you are using. March Browns, Gray Foxes, and Sulphurs are working (the Sulphurs are a big size 12).  At the same time other anglers are catching their trout underneath on emergers or nymphs, (black or brown stone flies, Micro stone flies, Prince, nymphs of what's hatching, and on streamers and buggers. Take your choice and if one doesn't work, try another, and try a twitch in the film if the dry doesn't work on top. This week I caught trout on a large Yellow Sally twitched just below the surface, others on a dry March Brown, and even more on a size 10 Sulphur - that is the fly it seemed they wanted the most, and, it is very easy to see. There is still a lot of food under the water for the fish!

Miranda Leigh's "Rainbow in the Clouds on Pine"

     It has been an interesting year to say the least. Scott Yoder's "talk" in the last newsletter pretty well sums up the type of stories we get in the shop. Scott said he fished for an hour and a half with no trout. He got out on the bank and watched another angler catch and released one fish after another - the angler shared his secrets with Scott, and he then took several nice browns.  At the same time I'm sure in another spot some success was achieved with dries, others with buggers, still others with emergers, while others went without a hit. Why?  

     Only the trout really know the answer, but, here we can speculate. The evening of the 21st, I set  up the underwater camera on a tripod at about 16 inches under the surface, got it going, and went downstream to fish... and ended up taking the 1st video at the top of the newsletter with another camera. Then, the camera went away and the rod came out. I saw piles of Gray Foxes, some March Browns, a couple Brown Drakes and a Green Drake, and the largest Sulphurs I've ever seen. I saw no Caddis even though they had been prolific. Nothing was feeding on the duns so I went with what I thought was best - the biggest  Yellow Sally in my box. Thirty or forty floats later, no takes. Twitching, skittering, nothing. Then, I quartered the fly downstream, twitched it under, and worked the fly around the bend and upstream. Not fifteen feet from my position the trout hit just under the surface with a splashing rise - the big brownie hooked itself. Another fell to the Sally underneath, so I changed flies to see what else might work. They took the Sulphur underneath as well as the orange-collared March Brown emerger. Very interesting. There were decent numbers of flies on the top but they were taking underneath, when fished with some action.

Surface Feeding Near Shore 5-6-2013 - Think they are chubs?