Best time to use sucker spawn?

[drumat26]

I've been fly fishing for about 5 years now and I still have not caught a fish on a sucker spawn. I fish Clarks and the run down at the breeches a lot. Do the suckers usually spawn in the spring because I definately see a lot of suckers in both streams. Just trying to expand my fly box a little bit and add some more patters to the list that have brought a fish to the net. Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[afishinado]

drumat26 wrote:
I've been fly fishing for about 5 years now and I still have not caught a fish on a sucker spawn. I fish Clarks and the run down at the breeches a lot. Do the suckers usually spawn in the spring because I definately see a lot of suckers in both streams. Just trying to expand my fly box a little bit and add some more patters to the list that have brought a fish to the net. Thanks in advance for the help!

Here is a list of flies I posted a while back. If you don't already have these patterns, I would add them to your box:

Sinking flies:

Wooly Bugger – Size 8 in dark olive w/ a black tail is my go-to. Having some black or white ones and a few a little smaller or bigger would be ideal. Fish anytime / anywhere – drift, swing and/or strip.

Hares Ear Nymph – size 10 – 16 w/ and w/o beads. Natural is my favorite, but a few in olive or black would round it out. Fish anytime / anywhere – dead drift

Pheasant Tail Nymph – Size 12 – 16 w/ and w/o beads. Fish anytime / anywhere – dead drift

Green Weenie – Size 12. Fish anytime / anywhere – dead drift

San Juan Worm – Size 12. Fish anytime / anywhere – dead drift

Soft Hackle – Size 12 – 16. Pheasant tail, Partridge and Orange, Partridge and yellow, peacock to name a few popular ones. Dead drift, swing, hang or strip. All will catch fish.


Floating flies:

Blue Wing Olive – Size 14 – 18 (early and late season mayfly hatches)

Adams – Size 10 – 18 (for dark mayflies)

Sulphur – Size 10 – 18 (mid-season light-colored mayfly hatches)

Beetle and/or Ant – Size 14 – 18 (Spring - late summer)

Griffiths Gnat - Size 18 - 22 ( For midges - very small insects - all year round)

Elk Hair Caddis – Size 10 – 18 in Tan, Black and Green for caddis hatches and/or stonefly hatches all season.

Note: Mayflies have an upright wing and look like sailboats on the water.

Caddis have wings shaped like a tent over their body.

Stoneflies have wings that fold flat over their bodies.

 

[pcray1231]

For sucker spawn (same goes for glo-bugs as well):

They are a fair choice for rainbows year round. Rainbows have a natural affinity to eat eggs. This is somewhat true of wild bows, but it's especially true of stocked fish that have not yet gotten into a natural feeding pattern and thus rely more on "instinct", and egg eating is one of their instincts. Very effective choice for stocked bows in the early season. In fact it's usually the first fly I try in those situations.

Browns, well, not so much except at certain times. Those times, in my experience are:

1. During the white sucker spawn. Typically March in most PA waters, into April into some northern tier or higher elevation streams. If you are lucky enough to find a pod of suckers actively dropping eggs (usually on shallow gravelly flats), there is likely to be wild trout behind them, and fishing can be quite fast.

2. Chasing spawning steelhead into great lakes tributaries, especially in spring when the steelhead spawn. The egg patterns will take both steelhead as well as browns that follow them, and there's often suckers in the same streams spawning at the same time as well.

3. You can have some success during late fall when brookies and browns are spawning, but be careful to avoid distracting the spawning fish!

 

[MKern]

Yeah, when you see a school of suckers in really shallow water just run an egg pattern through the school. Usually, there are a few browns hanging around.

I have even seen Browns nudge the suckers to encourage them to drop eggs.

 

[streamerguy]

Pcray covered the bases pretty well. I will add that I always carry some eggs with me from late fall through early spring, for both stocked and wild fish. Not just during the sucker spawn, but trout will eat their own eggs as well.

Eggs really came in handy for me over the weekend. I caught some fish on streamers starting out, but they didn't seem too crazy for them with the colder water. I then switched to a light pink glo bug and picked up a couple wild browns right away. Got that fly snagged up and didn't have any others, so I tied on a different egg in a more richer shade of pink and the hatchery rainbows were all over it. I later on hooked a few more wild fish on a nymph and on streamers again, but they didn't seem to want that richer pink egg which I found interesting. I've noticed this before where the wild fish preferred the lighter shades.

 

[Dave_W]

streamerguy wrote:
I've noticed this before where the wild fish preferred the lighter shades.

Interesting.
It seems to me, that if you look at trout eggs, they tend to be fairly light color - more in the range of a translucent light orange. Sucker eggs are very small and yellow. These natural, more subtle color tones are probably more realistic to wild trout than the bright pinks and oranges that many egg flies come in(?).

 

[pcray1231]

When you actually observe eggs, the color varies quite considerably depending on whether the egg is fertilized or not, and how long it's been there.

Coming out of the fish they're a pretty bright orange, with some bloodish red lines throughout. A fertilized egg soon takes a more translucent, light orangish cast. An unfertilized egg turns creamy white and then even bluish.

What I've noticed with fish, is that in the situation where you have located a pod of suckers and are fishing for trout set up behind them, a pastelish orange seems best.

In situations where you're just searching, I change colors often. I do mean often. Every time you change it seems like you get a few hits almost immediately, then it dies off. Change again and the same happens over and over.

Streamerguy's story is interesting. Sometimes you gotta think about what else may be involved, though. It's also possible the wild fish and stocked fish simply weren't feeding at the same times. i.e. with colder water the wild fish "turned on" sooner, so he caught them. Then they turned off and the stockies turned on. i.e. he could have reversed his color order and possibly gotten the same result! I've had that happen, and timing/sun angle/temperature may mean more.

Am I saying that's what was up? Nope. Could have been the color too. Maybe the wild fish were actively feeding on "natural" eggs and demanded a more exact match. Whereas the stockies were just taking them instinctually and the brighter color triggered that. Hard to tell.

Either way, the same applies. Change colors often. If one color works, stick with it till it stops working, then change.

 

[streamerguy]

pcray1231 wrote:
It's also possible the wild fish and stocked fish simply weren't feeding at the same times. i.e. with colder water the wild fish "turned on" sooner, so he caught them. Then they turned off and the stockies turned on. i.e. he could have reversed his color order and possibly gotten the same result! I've had that happen, and timing/sun angle/temperature may mean more.

That's very possible. I feel the stockies were "on" the entire time, since I caught some shortly after I arrived. They just preferred eggs over streamers in the cooler water and if I would've started out with eggs, the fishing might have been better from the start.

The wild fish though, yeah it's possible they just so happened to turn on after my color switch. But it didn't really make sense for them to turn off so quickly, and like I said I did hook a few more fish later on after switching back to streamers(warming temps could have gotten them more active, and they just didn't want that brighter pink).

The fact that they just turned on and off and the timing happened to line up is definitely a possibility, but I have consistently better success using lighter, more natural colored eggs when fishing for wild trout. Did the trout simply not want to eat the times I used the brighter colors? Maybe. Sounds like an interesting experiment throughout the fall, winter, and spring. Fwiw, there are very few suckers in this stream......but there are a few.

Even for steelhead I always do better with natural colors, and I tend to lean towards natural colors for regular stockies too......but sometimes they love that bright pink egg.

 

[pcray1231]

Even for steelhead I always do better with natural colors, and I tend to lean towards natural colors for regular stockies too......but sometimes they love that bright pink egg.

My best color, for stockies/wild/steelhead alike, has always been light salmon. i.e. creamish pink.

But as for what I try first, I always have gone by the old standby of bold, solid colors (blood red, solid orange, etc.) for muddy water and more towards the cream end of the spectrum for clearer water.

But what always strikes me is that, with eggs, I always seem to have a flurry of activity that dies off quickly. Then I change colors and have another flurry. Then you just keep changing. It pays to carry a lot of colors. It always makes you scratch your head when you've tossed virtually everything from bright reds to oranges to creams to chartreuse, and they've all worn out their welcome. Then you look in your box and see something just silly like blue or purple. Aww, what the heck. Bam, fish on. lol.

 

[streamerguy]

Yep! Happens a lot with other types of flies too. Strip an olive bugger through a pool and the fish seem very active......then nothing. Switch to black and you nail a couple more fish, then they become finicky again.......until you put on a white, and so forth...