Dan's Early Season Flies

We're lucky in the tahoe region, as we are blessed with a wide variety of aquatic invertebrates that hatch on our local waters. Some of my favorites are our early season mayfly hatches. We have grey drakes, march browns, callibaetis, green drakes + flavs, all happening in spring/early summer. Whats best, is you can copy most of these hatches with a few large, drab, impressionistic imitations-- a couple of which I've posted for you below.

The classic parachute adams in 10-14 doesn't seem like it should work in our technical watersheds, but it does. It's close enough to multiple hatches that trout usually seem to think its food of some sort. Most of the green drake imitations I see are waay too green or olive for our local variety. Especially when the insect has first emerged, a more drab, greyer imitation will often work better. I tie a dull, greyish/tan snowshoe cripple in size 8 down to size 20 and effectively fish that almost all season long if mays are hatching. The only time I swap it out as far as mayflies go is when the really light colored mays like the PMDs, PEDs or serratella (mr. pinky) hatch. Sometimes if the hatch is in its later phases I might throw a hackle stacker as a spinner imitation but that's usually not necessary.

The only drawback to these hatches is they usually occur near early season high water. Even then, with the size of the bug, that's often enough to pull the fish up in rough water. So unless the river is chocolate milk, you have a solid shot at trout on the surface once the big mayflies are hatching and for that I'm more than thankful. :)

Snowshoe Cripple:

MATERIALS:
thread: tan or grey 6/0 (or other)
hook: standard dry fly hook #8-20
tail: tan grizzly marabou
body: tan grizzly marabou
ribbing: small gold wire
thorax dubbing: Callibaetis antron dubbing
Wing: Dun snowshoe rabbit
hackle: grizzly or speckled dark dun

Snowshoe Humpy:

MATERIALS:
thread: olive 6/0 (or other)
hook: standard dry fly hook #8-16
tail: moose or coastal deer hair
wingcase: moose or deer pulled over with a
touch of head cement at the end
body: golden olive floss
Wing: Dun snowshoe rabbit
hackle: grizzly or grizzly + dark dun

--posted by Dan Lecount
(Photos by BJ)

Pyramid Lake Flies

Since I've been on a pyramid lake kick-- here's some video tutorials from Andy Burk-- specifically his pyramid lake ties that are posted on youtube. Come into the shop and hear more about flies for pyramid lake and buy the materials to tie these (or pick some up already tied!).

Pyramid Lake Woolly Bugger:


Pyramid Lake Tadpole:


Pyramid Lake Glitter Midge:


--Brian J.

Caught last Sunday on Streamers. MRW

A different sort of fish ladder...

Pyramid Lake. The place has some sort of alien magic to it. Whenever I'm there and remember to take the time to breathe in deep and take a slow look around I get the feeling that being on the surface of a different planet wouldn't look a whole lot different. Except I bet they wouldn't have trophy cutthroats swimming in the water:


Most guys who have fished Pyramid a lot would look at Justin's fish above and say casually "yeah, that's a nice fish." I still hold it in high regard as I've never managed to hook a fatso of this caliber. It was caught on a sparkly green woolly bugger fished on a sink tip. For my part I've only managed a couple of small ones on some sparkly nymphs fished a lot higher in the water column.


Now I know there's a lot of you out there dedicated to the pursuit of these cutthroats-- let's hear from you! E-mail me your big fish stories with a hero shot picture... and while you're at it let's hear about that secret fly that "gits'em" everytime! (renotroutblog@gmail.com)

-- posted by Brian J. who now thinks casting a 30ft shooting head in the wind is fun

Shout out

Here's a quick shout out to Michael who's been one of the brave few sending me photos of fish (renotroutblog@gmail.com hint hint)-- seems a SJW with a pheasant tail dropper was a good combo for these greedy, fat truckee rainbows. I love this first shot:


--bj

One fish day

Last week I made it out on the truckee a couple of times. I put a few fish in the net with a BWO emerger fished with a downstream presentation way back in the tailouts of a few pools, but for the most part it's been tough fishing through the downtown area. One particular day I was able to fish with Justin for 4 hours or so-- and between the two of us only one fish was hooked and landed.

I got the skunk but watching this fish lose it's mind and come flying out of the water multiple times made my day. I'd like to say we stayed cool and collected and got this guy netted and back in the water with a nod and a handshake but... instead I think I did that stupid high-pitched laugh that we all some of us do when we get excited. Justin and I also yelled "Soonnn!" a lot-- which is something I am truly proud of.

In the end this one fish made it an awesome day on the water:

25" brown trout taken by a generic dark-colored #14 mayfly nymph trailed behind a stonefly nymph.

posted by Brian J. who thinks this is a considerably higher quality post than the last one.