Hope Helps a Fly Fisher

I was on the river the other day searching for rising fish. Not many were cooperating and it got me thinking how long we stand watching the river waiting for a fish to rise. I began thinking of words to describe my feelings and thought how much observation, patience, and hope helps a fly fisher become successful.

Patience and hope keeps us returning to the water we enjoy fishing. And observation is more important to me these days while carrying my camera along the river. I’ve expanded beyond just looking for rising fish and spend almost as much time exploring eddy’s and the streamside brush for insects.

I’m happy to be back on our home waters, but it forces me to use those observation skills and determine which insects are hatching.

I’ll share a quirk Dancingtrout and I frequently do upon returning home.

We generally use our Winston Biix 9 foot 5 weight 4-piece fly rods for all of our fly fishing. After a day of fishing, we break them in half and wind all the line and leader in and the fly stays at the tip of the rod. We slide them in a 2-piece double fly rod case so they remain ready for our next day on the water.

If we go to a different river, the last fly gets fished in the water on our next stop before changing out flies to match the insects seen in the air or on the water. Yes, we’ve fished a Callibaetis fly pattern on a river just to see if it might work.

This strategy worked earlier this week.

Do you remember our experience with moth imitations on the Grey’s River, WY?

We also found a few on the Green River below Fontenelle Dam.

This is the fly which remained on my fly rod from the Green River, the last stop on our fly fishing road trip. It was a moth pattern I tied while sitting along the banks of the Grey’s River.

And to my surprise, three fish rose to that fly on the first day back to the Metolius! Here is one of the two I landed.

It turns out my hope was rewarded!

The next trip still didn’t reward us with many rising fish, so I ended up taking photos in an eddy.

The wind was blowing and quite a bit of tree garbage was floating down the river and the eddy was capturing it. I noticed a lot of small grayish colored specks in the water and thought it was seed pods or other plant parts the wind had kicked up.

Upon closer inspection, I was wrong.

They were yellowish/tan Micro Caddis about size 20. Only after taking a picture of a larger insect caught in all the “mess” did I finally see all the insects.

There were hundreds of empty shuck from these caddis as well.

There were a few larger Caddis in the eddy mixed in with the empty shucks.

And the streamside grass was full of small size 16 or 18 Little Olive Stones.

Further upstream, I found an empty nymph shuck on a log from a recently hatched Cascades Stone.

Sure enough, searching the nearby vegetation we quickly found an adult.

These Stoneflies are sizes 6 to 8, but they are quite elusive and are generally seen on the underside of leaves like this. Occasionally they fall in the water and a fish might take them, but it isn’t a hatch I concentrate on.

I’ll be back on my favorite river soon, full of hope!

Enjoy…go fish!