MJMFlyfisher
Well-known member
Played a little hooky from work on Friday afternoon...... Shhhhh. I needed to shake off the winter cold and windy blues, and the weather was beautiful!
I figured I'd go play with some of the fresh stockies on a delayed harvest water and some junk flies to feel a little tug on the line.
I made the decision to leave my Richardson chest box at home......after all I won't be needing any of the hatch matching anything in there right?? LOL
Started out as planned and landed 6-8 cookie cutter stockie rainbows on a fly that shall remain nameless, but rhymes with Kermy Germy. 😉 (I still feel a little dirty)
I started noticing a few bugs fluttering by.....bigger bugs.......?? and then I saw a slashy rise. And another.
I didn't think about stoneflies!!
And here they were bopping around all over the place. I looked downstream of where I was standing and could see fish after fish rising strongly in the glide below the next riffle.
I contemplated the 30 min drive back to my house for my fly box and back but figured I might miss the action by the time I got back.
I seriously didn't have a single dry fly on me. Except my midge box which wasn't gonna help.
🤔 Hmmmmmmm.......
Maybe I could get below them and try to nymph them up one at a time? , but what fun would that be??
Time to make the lemonade. LOL
In addition to the junk flies and streamers I had, I also had one small box of attractor style nymphs , some beadheads, prince nymphs, and a row of some unweighted partridge/ hares ears in a size 12. Partridge legs, pheasant tail, gold tinsel, orange thread......you know, a perfect match for an early stonefly!
That was the closest thing I had to size and might actually float.
So I stripped off the junk flies, put a fresh length of 5X tippet on , treated the nymph with some floatant and greased the leader and tippet.
I slid above the first fish on an angle 45 degrees down to it.......Figured at the very least I could skitter and hop the nymph on the surface like these stoneflies and maybe trick one that way if he couldn't get a good enough look at it.
Made a little slackline cast down to the first fish and he didn't even hesitate! GULP.
It was a bit of a challenge getting it to float after each fish , but 14 trout later I managed to successfully fish the nicest stonefly hatch that I can remember having with a stupid floating hares ear with an orange head!
Even some wild browns mixed in with the stockies.
And it seemed like the more mangled the fly got it worked just as well or better so I just kept floating it.
The killer was letting it float dead drift and then hopping and skittering it straight back upstream and let if fall back again into a feeding lane.
I gotta admit, I was feeling pretty spiffy after that one! 😁
(And of course I immediately put my chest box back into my travel bin as soon as I got home. Not doing that again!)
Any other "Lemonade" stories??
And the mangled "Stonefly dry"
I figured I'd go play with some of the fresh stockies on a delayed harvest water and some junk flies to feel a little tug on the line.
I made the decision to leave my Richardson chest box at home......after all I won't be needing any of the hatch matching anything in there right?? LOL
Started out as planned and landed 6-8 cookie cutter stockie rainbows on a fly that shall remain nameless, but rhymes with Kermy Germy. 😉 (I still feel a little dirty)
I started noticing a few bugs fluttering by.....bigger bugs.......?? and then I saw a slashy rise. And another.
I didn't think about stoneflies!!
And here they were bopping around all over the place. I looked downstream of where I was standing and could see fish after fish rising strongly in the glide below the next riffle.
I contemplated the 30 min drive back to my house for my fly box and back but figured I might miss the action by the time I got back.
I seriously didn't have a single dry fly on me. Except my midge box which wasn't gonna help.
🤔 Hmmmmmmm.......
Maybe I could get below them and try to nymph them up one at a time? , but what fun would that be??
Time to make the lemonade. LOL
In addition to the junk flies and streamers I had, I also had one small box of attractor style nymphs , some beadheads, prince nymphs, and a row of some unweighted partridge/ hares ears in a size 12. Partridge legs, pheasant tail, gold tinsel, orange thread......you know, a perfect match for an early stonefly!
That was the closest thing I had to size and might actually float.
So I stripped off the junk flies, put a fresh length of 5X tippet on , treated the nymph with some floatant and greased the leader and tippet.
I slid above the first fish on an angle 45 degrees down to it.......Figured at the very least I could skitter and hop the nymph on the surface like these stoneflies and maybe trick one that way if he couldn't get a good enough look at it.
Made a little slackline cast down to the first fish and he didn't even hesitate! GULP.
It was a bit of a challenge getting it to float after each fish , but 14 trout later I managed to successfully fish the nicest stonefly hatch that I can remember having with a stupid floating hares ear with an orange head!
Even some wild browns mixed in with the stockies.
And it seemed like the more mangled the fly got it worked just as well or better so I just kept floating it.
The killer was letting it float dead drift and then hopping and skittering it straight back upstream and let if fall back again into a feeding lane.
I gotta admit, I was feeling pretty spiffy after that one! 😁
(And of course I immediately put my chest box back into my travel bin as soon as I got home. Not doing that again!)
Any other "Lemonade" stories??
And the mangled "Stonefly dry"
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