Seasonal Change And A Note On The EB

Things are changing. You may notice it if you are an early riser. On June 21 the sun rose at 5:07am. Today it rose at 5:38am and sets at 8:02, a full 22 minutes earlier than that first day of summer. We've lost almost an hour of daylight over the last five weeks and at the end of this month we will have lost over an additional hour. What does this mean for the fly fisher? It means that fishing conditions are getting better.

First, August is historically cooler than July. There's less sunlight to heat things up. Temperatures cool off more during the longer August nights. Many of the larger aquatic insects are done for the season but are replaced with terrestrial insects like hoppers, beetles and crickets and ants. Especially ANTS. It seems that over the years the best weeks for winged ants are the 3rd and 4th weeks of August. I have fished over an ant swarm only to be told that someone was doing the same thing 60 miles away from me on the same day. My ant pattern is simple: size 16 and 18 hooks, a dark brown/rust colored body tied in an hour glass profile with two small blue dun hackle points tied at the "waist" and pointing backwards. Very slim wings of grey CDC does the trick too.

Another good autumn pattern is the pumpkin caddis. The Millers used to have swarms of this large rusty orange fly, the EB less so. Maybe that's why a grouse and orange works so well during the Fall.

The EB - this is the best year since 2009 which was an unbelievable year. Water levels have been great in July and with the slow cool down of August things will just get better. With luck we will have another 3 or 4 months fishing this treasure.

Watch, August will have two weeks of 90+ temperatures and no rain. Maybe, but things are still changing.

Keep Fishing!!

Ken