FYI CDC and Emerger Article

[littlelehigh]

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/sports/stories/669914850.html

Just a quick read on CDC and Emerger patterns.

 

[afishinado]

Just before opening this thread I was thinking I was goofing off from doing some work and thinking about what style of dry fly and emerger pattern works best and what I should tie for the coming season. I thought to myself that if I were to have to pick just one tie, it would be a compardun for dry flies and a CDC emerger. For honorable mention next would be a parachute dry, and for emergers a klinkhamer for larger flies, and lately a snowshoe emerger because they float well and are a little more visible on/in the water. Mike Heck was kind enough to tie up a sulpher snowshoe emerger for us at the FF show. I will give his pattern a whirl, but most of my emergers are CDC winged either using a loop wing or wet fly type collar wing as described in the article above. CDC seem to be a trout magnet.

When fishing, many times I will tie on both a dry and an emerger, using the dry to hedge my bet on what stage of insect the fish are rising to, and also to add some visibility for both the fish and for me. One thing I’ve been changed lately is tying the two flies a foot or less apart. In the past I used to tie them 2’ or more apart. What I found happening is that one fly would drift into a different current lane and dragging the other fly. To get a good drift they have to drift together in the same speed current.

So far this winter I’ve been tying mostly nymphs to stock up for the spring. I should be ready to tie up some dries and emergers soon. To decide what to tie, I check my dry mayfly boxes and make sure I have all the major hatches covered. For major hatches, I try to have a few dries in tied in different styles depending on the hatch, along with a few emergers to match the hatch. Also with certain hatches I try to have some spinner patterns tied up for the spinner fall.

In most hatch situations on the stream, I would guess that I catch 75% on emergers and 25% on dries, therefore, emerger patterns have become my bread-and-butter, bring-home-the-bacon, don’t-leave-home-without-them flies during a hatch. I’m interested to hear what others on the board think about dry and emerger patterns. Good luck.

 

[dryflyguy]

Afish:

Do you use emergers on the Delaware?
I've always considered that a dry fly stream, and that's all I've ever used up there.

I've been experimenting with klinkhammers the last few years - with mixed results. There have been a few times - mostly on hard fished waters - where they have caught me some fish that refused my regular dries. But there were also many times when they didn't seem to make a difference.
I tied some hendrickson klinks for the Delaware last year, but never really had the need to try them. My regular dries worked quite well up there, for once!

 

[afishinado]

My standard hatch matching rig for the Delaware is a comparadun or parachute dry and a CDC emerger. Depending on the hatch, the emerger will usually take a lot more fish for me. As I wrote earlier, keep the dropper short between the two, and as you know an angled downstream approach to a rising fish works best there.