| Multiple Hatches |
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| Thursday, 04 June 2009 | |
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Multiple Hatches I've been lucky enough to fish both the Hiwassee and the Taccoa the last few days and have had the pleasure of trying to figure out the multiple hatch scenario or what in the he!!!! are they feeding on? I hit the Hiwassee during a non-generation period from 10:00 AM until 1:00 PM on a bright and sunny day—not my ideal choice for time and weather in mid-May. The air temp was 68 degrees and climbing and the water temperature was 56 degrees. The fish were sporadically feeding at and near the surface and there were a few bugs around—actually a few too many! I saw some Sulphers, some Hendricksons, some light Chills, and maybe some BWO's and of course a few Caddis. I fished the first hour with the dry's and emergers of the above and picked up the occasional small trout (except one nice 15” bow that smacked a yellow post Sulphers emerger). I knew that there were more trout feeding than I was catching so what to do? If there are flies coming off the water, then there are nymphs rising to the surface (when they are most vulnerable) and hatching. The emerger of the three larger mayflies mentioned above have a similar looking slim size 16 nymph that is nicely represented by the Pheasant Tale (PT) nymph enhanced by the split-case look given by adding a small strip of yellow or gold over the wing case (tied from the thorax/abdomen joint to the head) and highlighted by a drop of clear epoxy which produces a magnifying effect. I have used epoxy and it works well but it runs, dries relatively slowly, and is messy. I now use UV Knot Sense. I put a SMALL drop on the gold strip and hit it with a UV light and it dries instantly, is clear, and one tube does thousands of flies. The picture below is a split case PMD—tie your PT with a slimmer abdomen but the wing case should look the same.  I put the PT Split Case about 18” below a pink post Light Cahill emerger (for viability) and started down stream. For the next two hours I caught a fish or had a strike on almost every cast, mostly on the PT but a few on the pink post. The fishing method was to cast quartering upstream and mend line to get the maximum dead drift. However, at the end of the drift, instead of lifting to cast, I let the PT swing from 18” underwater to the surface and then gave a few light twitches before lifting the flies off the water. I caught about 40% on the dead drift, about 35% on the drift rise, and about 25% on the twitch. I had the same scenario a few days later on the Taccoa. The day was overcast with an air temperature of 62 degrees rising to about 75 degrees. The water temperature was 52 degrees with the water just slightly stained from the recent rains. Fish were sporadically rising with the preponderance of the hatch being Hendricksons and various sizes of Sulphers. From my experience a few days before, I started out with the pink post as a visible fly and a PT emerger as a dropper and caught a trout on 4 of my first six casts—two of them solid 14 inchers! As the day progressed, the hatch changed more to Sulphers so I changed the visible fly to a yellow post Sulpher emerger and continued to catch fish until about noon when everything shut down. The highlight was a strong 16” bow that hit the yellow post as it rocketed toward the Sun. So, the lesson may be, try for a common look to help solve a multiple hatch. But, like most lessons that I have learned on trout, it may not be often repeated! Col (R) Roger L. Duckworth |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 04 June 2009 ) |
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