Woke early to arrive creekside at ~8:30am, took a gamble on a spot I’ve caught great caddis hatches in the past this time of year but found high flows, severely stained water and in-active trout. Based on the conditions I swung an SMB during the morning hours landing a handful and not much more. I took water temps every half hour to track any hatch potential but other than the scattered BWO and #30 Black Midges no other insect activity was seen. Water temps started at ~42°F at ~9am and warmed to ~48°F by 12:30pm. I fished until ~12:30pm when I became convinced that the high flows and colder water was not going to put off the hatch I was hunting for.

I blew out and decided to stop by a second location to see if the bugs I was searching for were around. At ~1pm the first glance at the creek from a ways away showed airborn trout, the caddis were here. I parked and hiked straight to the creek, put on a #18 Grey Caddis imitation and sat on the first run I came to landing close to fifteen smaller trout (<12in) and two slightly larger ones, all browns. After picking off quite a few and taking bug photo’s I progressed upstream. I came to fish a dry fly and thus I passed on any piece of water that didn’t show signs of rising fish, I wasn’t going to swap flies just to swap back a minute later.

I continued upstream picking off a handful of fish at each location. I finally came to a large open section that provided excellent fishing conditions, rising trout with thousands of caddis in the air. I observed several fish taking flies not from the surface but actually launching fully from the creek to snipe the food from mid-air. During the two hours I spent tossing dry flies here I noticed the rising come in waves, it seemed that in a moment the fish would all come to a halt and refuse to rise then a couple minutes later they would all begin the boil feverishly rising in rhythm. In these three hours I must have touched close to fifty trout all on the #18 Grey Caddis imitation. I didn’t take the time to dry out my fly after each fish, rather I fell into a pattern of catching a couple on a high floating dry fly after treating it with floatant then when it wouldn’t float well on it’s own I made a couple false casts and allowed it to sit half in the film, this continued to produce fish. When the fly was so saturated and I didn’t want to stop I simply allowed it to sink and fished it like a wet fly and sure enough it continued to snipe trout. When the rising died down I took the time to dry my fly out and applied floatant for the next wave to come. At ~4pm I had to leave the creek despite the hatch continuing to bring trout to the surface.

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I woke at 5am, assessed the estimated rainfall totals for the night before and made coffee. I wasn’t in a hurry, thought I might find chocolate milk and not in the fridge if you know what I mean. I drove by my initial location but the creek was up and blown, un-fishable. I made a decision at that moment to burn more time to the road but perhaps spend less time driving from creek to creek to maybe get lucky and find one fishable spot, instead I drove to the safe bet, to gin-clear water. By ~9am the air temp was above 60°F and would be pushing a predicted 80°F for a high later, first time this year I’ve wet waded. The first hour saw a mixed bag of random rises, likely to emerging Beatis or midge that had been hatching prior to my arrival. A handful of caddis were around but no steadily rising trout so I opted for a #8 Brown SMB, I missed two then landed a nicer 16inch brown that jumped more than any fish this season. I pushed on but dropped the SMB, some would have hit it but I would have been force feeding it, the trout didn’t want it, too big…they had smaller fare in large quantities coming. I’m glad I switched up when I did. Slapped on a #16 Olive Thin Nymph and took a handful of nice looking healthy browns.

By 10am it was clear the caddis were coming. The signature rise for pupa was beginning to occur in larger quantities, smaller trout could be seen airing out in the sun as they did back flips grabbing caddis pupa on the way out of the creek. Honestly, I wasn’t prepared for this. I was expecting Beatis and rifling through my dry fly box it dawned on me that I hadn’t thought to load the box with more Grey Caddis dries after last year… I only had two #18 Grey Caddis dry flies with me and the fish were already beginning to rise in rhythm. A bit of 5x tippet with one of two flies and I got to work on a single run that I landed ~10 trout from before the rising calmed and I swapped back to the #16 Olive Thin Nymph, took a handful more from the same run then waited and sure enough the hatch kicked in again, Grey Caddis ranging from some close to #20 to the larger #16. I fished faster broken water and took a bunch under 12inches with a couple over.

By 12:30pm the hatch was so thick that the fish almost shut down, it became difficult to discern my imitation from the rest so I stopped and watched the event unfold in front of me. A splash loud enough to be heard over the riffle I was standing closer to drew my attention upstream to a longer slow section of creek, larger fish were surfacing. With the slower water and the amount of bugs I opted to add a couple feet to my leader in an effort to fool those fish that would be more critical in the slower water. Longer casts standing in the middle of the creek were required. For close to an hour I stood on the same rock past my knees in cold trout water casting to each fish that showed its face. I missed a handful but smooth casting over 60ft allowed me to take several of the larger fish over 13inches with one over 14. Setting the hook from 50ft out and fighting those fish in…I’ve been waiting for this. My time frame dictated I leave by 1pm but the bugs, the trout, they dictated I stay just a little longer. I landed a couple more and took off almost thirty minutes late. I was later forgiven by the lady of the house, this video explained my reasoning and she was forgiving.

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I watched the Light Hendrickson’s hatch again today, I have been trying to watch this from the same section of stream several times during the entirety of this hatch to well, just to watch it and observe. Once again the cattle were around and that combined with almost an inch of rain yesterday made for some transparency issues on the stream today, that didn’t impede the hatch any, I think it prevented the trout from eating though.

I got to the stream and immediately saw several Light Hendrickson’s hatching, I collected a few and took photos, saw no rising trout. I waited for quite a while watching the same spot noticing a greatly increased volume of mayflies. I counted 5-10 pass every 10-20 seconds, this is much more than I observed last week. I expected to see rising trout and after a while and a little hiking to find some cleaner water I did in fact find rising trout. I love watching an excited trout rush your fly from the depths, keeps you on your toes man. I had a blast, caught several but most were small. I was a little disappointed that the hole containing the larger fish was being trampled by the cattle again, this kept the flow very muddy and I just watched hundreds of mayflies hatch without a single rise. I would be getting on stream earlier than you might think for this hatch, I would say to get a jump on it be ready at 10:30am and thats rigged and ready to go.

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Liz decided to come fishing with me Friday after she finished work. I rigged a spinner rod for her and I went light expecting to toss a few streamers and not much else. Liz is very allergic to poison Ivy and so we try to fish in locations that don’t contain any. We hit one of my usual haunts, get that, I’ve been doing this long enough for me to start saying that. I rigged Liz with a rooster tail and set her loose on fish, the last time I did this I ended up losing the fish count 2:1. We saw them think about taking it time and time again, she missed a strike or two but no fish. I rigged an olive wooly bugger but before I could get it wet I saw rising fish, watching I switched up. Nothing.

We moved on. I had a plan to stop at two points but somehow Liz managed to get me to swing through a different part of the stream and what came as a result will never be forgotten. We pulled over to trout, rising, launching. The Grey Caddis were on, full on. I’ve seen hatching flies before but nothing like this. The flies were thick, I know it gets thicker for some hatches but for what I’ve seen this was the thickest I’ve encountered, crawling on my legs, in my hair. I had no problem with it but Liz was unimpressed. I franticly re-rigged my dry fly and set to work. Liz began taking video and pictures for me as I started swinging. I would call the feeling, hatch jitters. I’m new to this and got excited, this honestly resulted in several crappy casts and a few lost flies. In the interim I landed over 16 trout, most were small between 6-10inches but a few larger were had. The action was so consistent that Liz even tried the fly rod again, seeing me pick a trout up almost every cast must have motivated her. Unfortunately, I was unable to help her get a trout on the fly.

After fishing the hatch for forty minutes the action slowed to a crawl. I figured I had put the fish down, but these fish were so taken with the hatch they seemed like they couldn’t have been put down. Looking back I think it may have just been a lull in the hatch, we saw less caddis hatching during this time. As we waited and watched Liz and I sat and laughed at the frantic state I had been in. Watching the trout swim and strike your fly almost every time it lands in front of your fly line is awesome, this time is spent landing fish rather than casting. I haven’t been in this situation before and it took me off guard, I fumbled and lost probably half of the fish I could have seen but I learned to relax and just before we were going to get in the truck to go they started up again. She actually told me to “rig up”, thats sexy man. I caught a few more before looming thunder clouds kicked us off the water. We left the rising trout and all the caddis behind to weather the storm.

We made it home and re-seeded our back yard and watched the rain come down, something that was bitter sweet. I wanted rain for the water level around here but at the same time I wanted one more chance at that hatch. I somehow managed to get clearance to head back the next day with the dog, Liz and Mike in tow. They kept the dog occupied and I managed to hit the same hatch again, this time it was much smaller, not sure if it was temp/weather related or if it was just that most had already hatched. Water conditions were good, clean and clear despite the rain. I had to work harder today, the fish weren’t as eager to smack anything that hit the surface. I managed to land several smaller trout, the larger ones must have been staying out of the surface game, probably related to amount of food with regard to calories spent to get that dinner. I picked up close to a dozen more and smiled, two days of tossing tiny light dry flies. Somehow I was given a special early birthday present.

This video is symbolic of that frantic, heart pounding rush that I felt when I realized what I was in the middle of. The quality isn’t the best but I think it serves its purpose and sure gives me a smile watching it. Note: What looks like blurry snow near the end of the video is the swarm surrounding us on the rocks. Thanks to Liz for filming in awe as I worked the fly rod to have one of my best days on the water. Damn I am lucky as hell.

Fly Fishing the Grey Caddis

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