The All-Around Fly, Our Rivers And Book Me

 

"Fly patterns are like literature: endless variations on a handful of themes.  The good ones are the ones that work, for whatever reason, and the great ones are those that survive beyond their own generation." - John Gierach

Let's talk about the rivers first.

The Millers - It cracked the 800 cfs barrier on Sunday with a 786 flow and with a projected rainfall through next Sunday of only .30 inches it will come down even more. I'll be spending time there with week saying hello to the browns!!!

The Ware - My client almost broke the half dozen mark a few days ago but we dropped a lot of fish.  The DFW appears to be playing with us by stocking a zillion 6 inch browns in this river. Its the second year in a row that this has happened and I'm wondering if they are performing an experiment or are they making more room in the hatchery for more rainbows??

The Swift - It's down to 686 and that flow can't drop fast enough for me!!! There are a lot of smallmouth that have come over the spillway in the last two weeks and that could spell bad news for the brook trout. Remember, brookies and smallies don't mix and wherever they are together the smallies win out. The State of Maine once didn't have smallies!!!

The EB - It's VERY FISHABLE right now with a flow of 454 (it was 407 just 48 hours ago) but the days of catching 50+ fish courtesy of a recent stocking are long gone for this Spring  unless they stock again. The flow of this river has been a yo-yo over the past month so the trout are spread out. This flow will will drop to the 250 range and stabilize I think, much as it did in 2009, the best year I've had on this river!!!!!

The WB - It;s been weird this Spring. The flows on this river have been steady but the fishing hasn't held up. Last year June was very good on the West Branch. Let's hope it's the same this year.

Stocking will be over by Memorial Day.  Fish now!!!

The All-Around Fly

Do you ever wonder what you would use if you HAD to limit yourself to one fly pattern. I play with this thought on occasion and I believe have a final style based on its versatility and fish catching ability and it's the SOFT HACKLE !! (pattern colors are not that important, materials are!!)

Your standard SH is a nymph, a sunken adult fly, an emerger AND a dry fly all rolled into one.  It all depends on how you fish it. Let's say that it is early  on a Spring  day when insects have not started hatching BUT YOU KNOW THEY WILL!!  A SH fished deep on an upstream cast and then high sticked past you (it's ok to use split shot) is the same technique used by the great Theodore Gordon over a 100 years ago. You can fish this fly on the swing to imitate the emerging insect but you really have to do it correctly and that is with constant MENDING of the line. Mending allows the fly to drift lower in the current and slows down the drift of the fly to a natural speed instead of it being pulled by the line  like a water skier attached to a speedboat!

And with the standard soft hackle you don't have to think about imparting "action" to the fly because the soft hackles naturally move with the slightest current which is all the movement that you need. (actually this is true for all subsurface flies. They are bounced around buy currents coming from all directions JUST LIKE A NATURAL INSECT!!

Now for the Dry Fly. How does a fly that is made from materials that absorb water become a dry fly.  Answer: it doesn't but it becomes an emerging insect and that's what you want to fish.  Most "rises" are not for the adult insect but for the insect that's trying to break through the surface film. Drifting a soft hackle down and in front of a surface working trout is the perfect presentation. The fly rises in the current in front of the trouts feeding lane, the perfect presentation!!!!

Is there a second place fly???  Yes, it's the Golden Ribbed Hares Ear AND any Sawyer nymph.