Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Biomass

 
Blue skies, little wind with great visibility, and tons of bugs on the water make for VERY picky fish.
 
I took Randy and his wife, Pat out again yesterday because as Randy says, she catches fish with me and that makes her happy. It's not a bad play because trust me, significant others aren't the best people to teach their better half how to fly fish, (or golf, or cook, or ...) It's a completely different relationship where I can be honest and say things to a woman I don't know and she's just going to accept the fact that I'm trying to help and I probably know a little about the subject. When a husband or boyfriend says it, it puts the wife or girlfriend into a vulnerable situation where they look like a failure to the partner or even worse, subordinate in that role and the last thing women want is to feel like a subordinate to their partners. It's not just with women either but kids often react the same way with their parents. There's so much pressure to produce and when they struggle, they get stressed and take things personal and then blockage and defiance and bla, bla, bla...trust me, take a guide and fish out of the back of the boat and don't pay any attention to what's going on in the front until she hooks up. You'll have a much better day and so will she.
 
We did have two very good days, even though yesterday would prove to be a bit tricky at times. We wait all winter and into the spring to see bugs and then we get PMD's, caddis, midges and all of this stuff floating downstream at the same time and now there's too much food in the water. You just can't win, huh? Well, you can and we did.
 
Here's the deal; when bugs hatch, fish start eating and they keep eating throughout the day. The bugs don't keep hatching though but instead, molt and change color and profile and even go from living things to dead clumps of biomass.
 
We started out pretty good yesterday going short with caddis pupa-looking flies and PMD nymphs. We were getting fish pretty regularly until about noon when it looked like every fish in the river started coming up. We started throwing dries at them and changing up nymphs and for a while, could not buy a bite. They were so picky and even with a good angler, we just couldn't get them to eat what we were throwing. We tried big caddis, little spent spinners, cripples, emergers, CDC stuff and nothing but a little dink. I looked down into the water a few times and we all commented on how much stuff was floating by and most of it was dead bugs. So we took a break and the wheels started turning.
 
You ever pick your way through a pack of trail mix? What do you look for? I always go for the M&M's first and then the cashews and almonds and eventually make my way to the bottom of the barrel; the peanuts. If I'm not that hungry, I might even just chuck the peanuts out and crab another handful to get back to the M&M's. Well, yesterday afternoon was like a river full of trail mix and fish were just picking out the M&M's so we had to give them what they wanted. And to a fish, a juicy glob of bugs stuck together is that M&M.
 
I started tying a bug that looks like a rainbow warrior a few years back but instead of a pheasant tail, I used this kinky clear fiber for the tail. I can't even remember what it's called but with all the multi-colored dubbing and that tail, it just looks like a clump of dead stuff. It's like the nymph version of Lafontaine's buzz ball, which literally is tied to look like a clump of dead bugs floating on the surface. Immediately after going to that little bug we started getting back into fish consistently and although the big guys kind of disappeared for a while and the dinks came out in force, we never went too long without hooking up on something decent.
 
The last thing I'd say about days like yesterday is that sometimes with that much food in the water, throwing an ant out there can be like finding a chocolate covered almond in your trail mix. Just saying.
 
Keep 'em where they live...

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