Seasons Change on the Metolius River

And just like that, the seasons change on the Metolius River. We had our first snow on Halloween. It’s like someone throw’s a switch on November 1 and the weather and hatches change. To be fair, the weather has changed, but there continue to be insects hatching with fish looking to eat them. It’s only a matter of time before that changes. Maybe another week or two at the most. You’ll find some BWOs or midges hatching throughout the winter months, but gone will be the PMDs on my favorite river and their mass hatches. I’ll have to wait till next year to see them again.

No two days on the river are the same. One day you might see a few fish rising to insects. The next day, no fish are rising. But I’m always surprised to find a fish rise to my fly with a blind-cast over a likely holding spot. Here is one of them. I watched it move sideways to eat the fly as it drifted downstream.

This riser was fooled with a small BWO Sparkle Dun.

We observe a variety of mayflies on the water. Many are yellow in color and appear to be PMDs in size 16. A closer look will show either a PMD or Cinygmula like this one.

Notice the two tails, which I believe to be a Cinygmula. The color is different, but we’ve seen color differences before in PMDs.

Here is an image of a PMD I captured a year ago. Notice the 3 tails.

And another of this Cinygmuyla which looks similar, but only has 2 tails.

I doubt the fish count tails before eating them. I select flies by size, profile, and lastly color.

It pays to find a few insects floating in an eddy to determine the colors available to the fish.

Changing a Sparkle Dun body color is easy to do, so I tie them with Superfine March Brown to imitate them.

I’ve been tying a lot of parachute style flies lately and decided to tie some in size 16 to imitate the small mayflies we’ve seen floating downstream. There are a couple of slots with faster water and I thought these might float better and be more visible with a white post.

Here are the two flies using March Brown and PMD color dubbing. I tied them with a Zelon tail because I believe it imitates a mayfly stuck in the nymphal shuck and is an easy prey for trout.

Turns out they work!

It’s a pleasure to see colorful, healthy rainbows rising to our dry flies!

Enjoy…go fish!