Few moments in fly fishing are more exciting than arriving at your favorite spot and seeing the water dimpled with rising fish. Whether it’s brown trout sipping mayflies or rainbows smashing salmonflies, it’s a moment we all dream of experiencing.
Unfortunately, moments like these can also be frustrating lessons in humility. Fishing a dry-fly hatch can be hard work requiring the patience to find the right fly and right drift. But once you crack this code, you can catch fish after fish and create some of the finest memories you’ll ever have from fly-fishing for trout.
Here are ways to increase your odds of turning the next hatch you see into a fishing trip you’ll always remember:
- First, just look: Seeing a hatch and rising fish is a sight guaranteed to get your heart pumping. But instead of rigging up your rod and rushing to the bank to make some casts right away, it’s important you slow down and take time to look around and figure out what’s really happening.
Before you start casting, watch the water to figure out what the fish are eating. During most hatches, there are a variety of bugs active at the same time. While you may see mayflies in the air or on streamside brush, the fish may be taking something different. Before you tie on a fly, slow down, look around, and figure this out.
- Then figure out where they’re feeding: During a hatch, insect activity isn’t limited to the surface. Instead, some nymphs are just rising from the bottom. Others are stuck in the film, struggling to emerge from their casings. Then there are fully hatched bugs getting ready to fly into the air. Trout will key in on bugs in any of these stages. To catch these fish, you need to figure out which stage they’re feeding on.
Eyes on the rise
Fish take different types of hatching insects in different ways. When trout are focused on emergers, their rises are swirls. When they’re taking caddises or mayfly duns, their rises are more like dimples. When trout are feeding on spinners (egg laying or dying mayflies), their rises are gentle and almost lazy. And when trout key in on fast-moving bugs like stoneflies (or terrestrials), their rises are fast and splashy.
As a you can imagine, telling these different rises apart can be tough—at first, anyway. To help you out, here are some tips on how to spot and fish them.
- Emergers: These are helpless nymphs wriggling in the surface film as they hatch into duns. When trout rise for emergers, their arcing momentum creates a swirling boil.
If you see rises like these, try CDC-style flies with bodies that sink into surface. Another great tactic is to ties on dry fly that matches the hatch and add dropper wet fly or nymph just behind it.
- Duns/spinners, caddis & stoneflies: When people imagine a hatch, they see trout rising to duns or spinners. These are mayflies in their third and then fourth (and final) stage. Both sit on the surface of the water, leading to those classic ring rises fly fisherman love to see.
During the height of a mayfly hatch, duns float along, drying their wings. This is when fish line up in feeding lanes and let the current bring dinner to them. But because these winged meals could take off at any moment ready, the fish pounce on them a bit and cause more action on the surface.
Spinners are either egg-laying or dying mayflies. For the most part, this meal’s not going to escape. So, the fish can take their time. When trout feed spinners, the rises are casual and even lazy.
Adult caddis and stoneflies also sit on the surface. But they’re active bugs, skittering across along as they prepare to fly off. For trout to turn one of these bugs into a snack, they need to be aggressive. This means they’ll produce some splashing and foam when they rise.
BTW: Once you’ve determined fish are feeding on hatched bugs, grab one of these insects for a closer look. The sun plays tricks on us and bugs typically appear to be larger than they really are. Once you have the specific insect and you’ve found a dry fly that matches it, it’s time to tie it on, make some casts, and catch some fish.
Don’t be a drag
To successfully fish dry flies, you need to master the drag-free drift. Drag is the pull your tippet/leader/line puts on a fly, and when you’re fishing dries—especially to wary trout—it can put an end to your chances of catching fish.
To eliminate drag, try various types of “mends”, which are ways to manipulate your fly line and leader to they don’t pull on, or drag, your fly. Another technique to try is changing your position on the stream. A few steps upstream can make all the difference.
Try and try again
Say you’ve done all of the above like a champ and you’re still getting refused by fish. What do you do then? First, go through your fly box and pick a new pattern. Instead of going for a dry that’s an exact match, get a bit creative. Tie on something with less hackles or a slimmer profile, or change up the color a bit. Little adjustments like these can be the tweak you need to put a trout on your line. Just because a fly looks right to you doesn’t me the fish like what they’re seeing.
Don’t be afraid to modify flies that you have already to make them sparse. If you don’t have anything else to offer then your only option is to try and clip some hackle fibers, maybe remove the tail feathers of the fly. Just don’t expect to keep casting over the same fish with the same fly if things aren’t working out. If the trout are refusing it, then they will continue to do so until you switch things up with another pattern.
Patience pays off
The next time you stumble across a hatch, remember: Patience is crucial when setting up for rising trout. Take your time. And if you think you’re doing everything right and still get refused by the fish, look at it as a challenge that’s can be met. With the right fly, the right drift and the right consideration given to the fish, you can crack the code and put a trout on your line.
Sometimes we may go home without success though, and by taking what we’ve seen and learned to the fly vice or fly shop we can try out new patterns and fool them next time. No pleasure compares with getting beaten one day, going back to the drawing board, going back out the next day, and then fooling fish after fish with your new fly—and new perspective.
