Drakes on Penns

[MD_Gene]

Fished Penns Creek from Sunday (5/24) until today. We caught fish every day. Some days we got more than others but the fish entertained us each day. I met up with friends from ROFF (Recreation Outdoors Fishing Fly) a former Usenet Group now on FB. We had guys from NC, CT, Nebraska, DE, and one guy from Hong Kong (an international teacher on sabbatical until he heads to Africa).

On Wednesday morning by going after the fish very early (on the water by 6:30) I discovered that the drakes were coming off at 7:30. So each day, I got on the river early and you could pretty much set your watch by it. And still catching them on emergers at 9:30! This is great for a morning person like me who doesn't like fishing into the darkness every night. The drakes were really not active in great numbers at night.
There were some frustrating times as the fish were rising consistently but we could not figure out what they were eating. Here's what the Penns Creek spoiled trout had on their menu: 2 kinds of march browns, several types of caddis, drakes, sulphurs in a variety of colors, red quills, BWOs, and of course midges.

Here are some pics:
The drakes including a shuck.


One of the locals. The Beav

A beautiful rainbow of 16 inches:

A Penns Brown of about 14. These fish fight like fish a lot bigger.

 

[SteveG]

Nice write up Gene. I was up from Wednesday afternoon to Saturday afternoon. I'll add that there were also four sizes of stoneflies hatching, two of which were golden stones and yellow sallies.

 

[MD_Gene]

You are right on! How could I have forgotten the stones!!!?? I had significant success with them that week. But I had a bunch of size 4's, 6's then 12's and smaller but ran out of the effective size 8's.

 

[dryflyguy]

Drakes can hatch early in the morning - especially during warm weather. And it is often beneficial to be on the water at dawn.

The problem for me though, is that I'm usually fishing the coffin flies until late at night - sometimes not getting off of the stream until 11 pm.
And then finding it difficult to rise that early the next day.

 

[MD_Gene]

Yes, I know what you mean, hard to do both but we were catching them on coffin flies at 10 and 11 AM. My eyes are not what they used to be and putting on even a size 10 fly can be a challenge at 9:20PM.

And yes, we figured the unseasonably warm weather was triggering the hatches.

 

[troutbert]

Do you think there were more drakes hatching in the morning than in the evening? And were you seeing many spinners in the morning?

About the stoneflies. Were you having success with dries or nymphs?

 

[MD_Gene]

The trout were taking coffin flies in the mornings. Most of the hatching I saw was in the AM. In the few days I looked it was about 80% morning and the rest in the evening.

The stones were nymph stage

 

[pcray1231]

I've seen drakes hatch in the morning. But I've never seen the spinners in the air in the morning. Not saying it doesn't happen.

That said, yes, there are PLENTY of coffin flies still on the water come dawn, and the fish do take them, and often the fishing is actually better due to lack of competition (from other anglers as well as from natural flies). They fell the evening before. But there are so many of them, and some get caught in eddies, streamside vegetation, etc, and feed out slowly. Plus, some are falling miles upstream, and it just takes a long time to feed down. Think of them like runoff from a rain, lol. You got the storm, and then it's gonna take a while for all those bugs to "run off".

 

[JackM]

It does happen, like with all hatches and falls, the main event follows a predictable time-line, but there are always confused specimens. I have very limited experience with the drake hatch, but find the fishing is better when the number of bugs doing their thing is on the sparce side.

 

[Hook_Jaw]

Drake came off heavy when I fished it sunday night was no one around storms must of scared the flat landers off.