BUGGIN’ OUT

Nine of the best hatches you could ever hit.

KARCZYNSKI THOMAS STURN SAUTNER SANTELLA HAMZA ZOBY RIPPLE KEER

Daylight Hex’n

Hexagenia, Western Michigan By Dave Karczynski

Despite elephant-sized quantum computers that operate at deep space temps or not at all, the game of chess— where the most powerful piece is essentially an angry woman with a longbow—remains unsolved. Another: How will the cosmos end? Maybe by spinning off into nothing, maybe by a cosmic crunch—top physicists flip a coin.

And this: when it comes to figuring out Western Michigan’s brown trout, the situation is dire—most people fish the Hex limbata only at night. My Hex epiphany—or heresy—came about on the banks of Wisconsin’s Tomorrow River when I was in my 20s. At the time, I was as unencumbered as I was unemployed—by which I mean I caught more inches of trout per week than I had dollars in my bank account, and bathed so infrequently I greased my leaders by running year—twitching midday, B-52-bomber-style Hex spinners to the tune of at least one sharking attack per outing. Fishing Hex by daylight—is it a trap? A deviously concocted misdirection meant to wear out competitors and grant me an empty river as night falls in early July? Far from it. It’s just me shouting as loud as I can that there are endless strange discoveries yet to be made in the dark arts of fly fishing the Midwest, and so, so many ways to skin a trout.

If you’re looking for a place to hone those skinning skills, get yourself to Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Michigan—the Holy Trinity of Hexdom—when the first real heat comes in mid-to-late June. While the most famous Hex rivers include Wisconsin’s Bois Brule and White, along with the Pere Marquette, Au Sable, and Manistee Rivers in Michigan, just about every north country Midwest

JEFF ERICKSON TOM HAZELTON

them back and forth across my forehead. My general modus at the time was to fish until 2 a.m., sleep until noon, and then gulp a can of warm soup or some Campbell’s gazpacho, depending on midday temps. After that I’d fish terrestrials or Cahills for a few hours before regrouping for the big bug main event. Until one afternoon.

I can’t say whether it was due to a meteorological downburst or localized tornado, but somewhere around 4 p.m., a heap of Hex spinners hit the water. Since the Tomorrow is a river of slow flows, I was able to count the exact number of bugs—14—all of them twitching and batting their wings on the meniscus, like little crank-up bathtub toys. I was standing at a long, straight stretch of the river and had trained my eyes on the lead bug, curious to see how fish would respond to Hex spinners some six hours ahead of schedule. And though it took some time—about 150 yards of slow float—that first bug of the day got whacked. Hard.

The next afternoon I was back on the water, ready to get experimental, to solve a mystery. I tied on an oversized Hex spinner, dropped it a few feet in front of me, and started to feed line into my drift, alternating between stack mends and careful twitches as my fly drifted past logjam after logjam. Then, out of nowhere, I was met with a sight I wouldn’t see again until a decade later while fishing dragonflies in Chile: a brown trout going three feet airborne after my bug.

That fish missed my offering—of course—but I did catch a nice brookie a few casts later and, more important, discovered one of my favorite ways to fish the days of June and July every trout stream has a resident population of big bugs. (Wisconsin’s Driftless is the exception.) That said, you won’t find Hex in the pebbled headwaters of these streams. In its nymphal form, the Hex is a burrowing mayfly and, furthermore, subsists on a diet of muck and silt—all the dark, stinky organic matter left over from decayed trees and vegetation. Therefore, you should focus on slower, warmer water—the kind trout anglers often describe as “marginal” and that produces the occasional pike or smallmouth in addition to trout. As said, Hex emergences occur at dusk, with spinners tending to fall best on humid nights when temperatures at nightfall are 70 degrees or higher at dark. Once the hatch gets under way, anglers can expect to encounter fish feeding on all three stages of the bug—emerger, dun, and spinner—at the same time. You should be prepared to cycle through a few patterns before you find one that works on the river you’re targeting. And while imitative patterns fit the bill in most situations, on new moon nights, be sure to pack along a Death Hex or two. These all-black patterns, which you’ll probably have to tie yourself, create a stark silhouette that trout key in on easily. Last but not least, when Hex fishing, you’ll want to pack along your big net—the one you use for steelhead. You don’t want to be undergunned on the brown trout of a lifetime.

When I first arrived in Ketchum, Idaho, back in the 1990s, I’d fished a lot of western stillwaters and many freestone streams, but I’d never seen anything like south-central Idaho’s Silver Creek. When I looked at the creek’s narrow, flat, and uniform flows, I thought, It all looks the same. Where should a guy even cast? Fortunately, I lucked into friendships with several local guides, and they spent many afternoons aiming the rookie at productive spots, always with a directive: Don’t cast until you see a rise.

One sunny and warm June evening, while we rested in the creek’s lush bankside grass, sipping beer and waiting for a brown drake appearance, I spotted a rise, right alongside a floating mat of vegetation. I leaped to my feet, made a good cast, and moments later, after a short fight, had a 20-some-incher in the net. I was all smiles, but one of the guides wasn’t impressed. He took a big pull off his Rainier, shook his head, scowled, then chuckled and said, “Jesus, Thomas. You’re the first person to ever fish a Mohair Leech during a brown drake hatch.”

With a perplexed look on my face, and a single digit raised his way, I said, “What? You didn’t tell me which fly to throw.”

Ah, brown drakes. Those large, size 8 and 10 mayflies can be found all around the Northern Rockies (and elsewhere in the country), but they are most noted on the Gem State’s Silver Creek and Henrys Fork. They can be present on Silver Creek in early June, although some years they may not arrive until deeper into the month. It’s all weather and water temperature dependent.

Silver Creek’s drake activity draws anglers from around the country, all hoping to cast a dry fly over one of the stream’s legendary brown trout, meaning fish that weigh between 5 and 10 pounds and spend their daylight hours skulking under the banks, or in the deepest pools, crushing baitfish and crustaceans. These fish rarely eat drys, but do so during a brown drake emergence and spinner fall, which usually occur during low-light situations and into complete darkness. Because those drakes are large, and because they come off in staggering numbers, the largest browns—and rainbows, too—declare those bugs as worthy of their attention. At no other time are the creek’s largest trout so vulnerable to an angler.

The potential to catch such large trout on drys makes crowding on the creek an issue. But patient anglers who stake out a section in late afternoon and hold their position into and well past total darkness—which could begin at 10 p.m.—often see some solid snouts.

That’s what I did one evening, while fishing an area above Picabo Bridge. As the sun dropped, a few of the big bugs came off, enough to draw a couple fish to the surface. I landed one during the emergence, and then right before dark I saw a mass of brown drake spinners dancing above the banks. Soon, some of those bugs were hitting the water, and the boils quickly followed. I landed a couple good browns before I pushed my float tube into the creek and drifted downstream, to a point where a friend would be waiting, I thought, in his Suburban.

Near where I thought he might be, I saw an impressive rise and tied on a down-wing spinner. I’m not much of a tier, but I’d wound some dubbing to a hook, attached Hungarian partridge feathers as wings, and moose hair for a tail, and hoped to take a good fish on this fly. It would be good for only one or two casts before moisture would sink it—that is, it was a low-pro model lacking hackle. I waited for the fish to rise again and then cast my fly just a couple feet above the rings. Sure enough, that fish ate. It was a brown, at least 19 inches long, with a high back and incredible inky black and crimson spots.

I hopped back in the tube, fully satisfied, and floated downstream. In the dark, with no moonlight, I couldn’t be sure where my friend might be. As I rounded one turn, a scream sounded down from a cottonwood tree—like a howler monkey that just got its ass pricked with a pin. I about spilled out of the float tube and nearly pissed my waders before I heard that laugh—the same I’d heard when that fish took a Mohair Leech. A light beam shot out of the limbs, and there, cackling wildly, was my friend. That’s what I like about brown drakes on Silver Creek. The fishing can be hit or miss, great at times and stone-cold dead at others. But the opportunity to take a big brown on any given cast, in one of the most beautiful valleys in the West, makes this hatch one of western fly fishing’s greatest events.

Greg Thomas is this magazine’s editor in chief. Check out more of his work at www.anglerstonic.com.

Brown Drakes and the Mohair Leech

Silver Creek, Idaho By Greg Thomas

Afriend lost a fly box on the Crowsnest River. It slipped out of an open vest pocket. We never knew where or when. All we knew was it was gone. I searched down one side while Richard splashed across and searched down the other until his progress was halted where the river rushed up against a rock wall. He waved me off and pointed upstream, signaling I should meet him back where we’d started. “This sucks,” he said, wading out. “All my Stealth Caddises were in there.”

His first trip to Alberta wasn’t off to the best start. Crap weather and reluctant rainbows made his few days on the Bow near Calgary underwhelming, so on the two-hour drive south this morning, I assured him that the Crowsnest would be different. But now I imagined the box—my gift of a clear Orvis full of perfect little hand ties—spinning in eddies and bumping off boulders, eventually tumbling over Lundbreck Falls a few kilometers downstream. There are some big trout below those falls. At dusk they start looking up for caddisflies that the size 16 Stealth Caddis matches perfectly in dark waters.

Now he didn’t have any. And that’s where we were headed.

Smaller and wilder than the Bow, the Crowsnest flows east along Highway 3 in southwestern Alberta until it joins the Oldman River northeast of the village of Cowley. It’s a walkand-wade dream river that fishes best late June through early autumn. In July, I like to pitch my tent at Lundbreck Falls. Above the falls, the Crow is primarily a rainbow fishery, boasting 1,500 trout per mile; below, you’ll find browns too. Fifteen-inch fish are typical here, but don’t be surprised when a 22-incher stretches your net.

For me, the Crowsnest is a welcome retreat, its caddis hatch a refuge from the lingering stuffiness of fly fishing. Sometimes I just want to spend a week wet-wading, knowing I’m gonna get ’em and sipping the beer I stashed in the shallows for the walk back. Each day I can do something different, or nothing at all. Because every night around 9 p.m., I can walk down to the river and catch big trout on little caddis patterns. It doesn’t matter if my casting’s a bit off, or if I don’t know the names of the bugs they’re biting. There doesn’t have to be anything technical about it. I don’t want to be the Friday fly shop hero telling everyone what they just missed. I just want to drink a beer and catch a few trout.

There’s a midstream rock near the campsite, my twilight perch every trip. Sitting there at dusk, I can see them, big snouts emerging from the choppy water. Gently lay 5X just above them, and watch the little black speck bob along until someone eats it. As the light leaves, I cast blind and strip back once, twice, three times. The line often tightens before the third strip. There in the dark, my reel will chatter while I wedge my boots between slick rocks.

This is tricky. Sometimes I’ll bruise a knee. Or fall in. I lost a hat once, which I found the next morning a few hundred feet downstream. But never a fly box. Near midnight I’ll walk back to camp, sipping one of those Big Rock Traditional Ales I stashed in the cool shallows. My neighbors are long asleep. I’ll sit at a picnic table in the perfect darkness and listen intently to nothing. Tonight, Richard’s first on the Crow, our headlamps illuminate rough caddis tied to replace lost ones. It’s Saturday and the campground is full. We hear the kids giggling from the trails below camp, and know that the trout won’t be looking up for a while. Later, with a handful of ragged wraps of elk hair and dubbing, we shuffle through the currents until we find a spot that fits our feet.

We false-cast with eyes closed and heads bowed so the bills of our caps shield errant hooks. Those ugly little flies land up there in the chop, then float toward us until something big stops them.

After a dozen of these moments, I’ll mention open pockets and unappreciated gifts. Richard will reply that good gifts are worth sharing.

“Maybe someone will find it,” he’ll say, the day’s frustrations tempered by hot fishing on a warm summer night.

We’ll never know if one of those kids playing below the campsite will find that box intact and learn to snug a clinch knot up against one of those perfectly tied little flies. And then, one night years later, seeking refuge from a bright and busy world, close her eyes and cast upriver into the darkness below Lundbreck Falls.

Dana Sturn is AA’s Canada editor and the founder of speypages. com. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Night Caddis

Lundbreck Falls, Crowsnest River, Alberta By Dana Sturn

Eastern Stones and the Hot Mess

Catskill Mountains, New York By Stephen Sautner

They appear magically, like presents under a Christmas tree when you were seven years old. One morning in late May, you wade into the stream and—behold!— dozens of stonefly husks cling to every rock and boulder. Suddenly, each run, tailout, and slot beckons like an all-you-can-eat buffet. And you are freaking hungry.

Here in the Northeast, stoneflies are not nearly so celebrated as the famous salmonfly and golden stonefly hatches on western rivers. Yet fast fishing awaits those anglers ready to adapt. Forget graceful 70-foot casts, lovely drag-free floats, and trout rising as a Bach sonata plays in the background. Time to knot on some 8-pound Maxima and splatter down big, hairy bugs with graceless hauls. This is fly fishing to Motörhead.

Thankfully, stoneflies do not prompt Latinizing the way mayflies do. I lump all my springtime stones together as either golden, black, or brown and leave it at that. Someone who sidles up to you at a bar and mentions he is eagerly awaiting the emergence of Acroneuria lycorias should be avoided. On the other hand, if the guy on the next stool over tells you he just saw a crapload of goldens, immediately ply him with alcohol—and lots of it. Except for the tiny, early black stoneflies you sometimes see motorboating across creeks during winter thaws, most fishable eastern stonefly hatches are later spring occurrences. On my home waters in the Catskills in southern New York, which includes world-class rivers such as the upper Delaware, Beaverkill, and Neversink, I don’t expect to see them in any numbers until just before Memorial Day, with mid-June being about the peak. And bulk numbers are what you are looking for. When these bugs erupt, trout suddenly lock in on them, like crocodiles greeting the wildebeest migration. Everything from six-inch brookies on tiny mountain tributaries to 20-inch browns in the big Delaware have at it.

But don’t look for traditional blanket hatches. Though you may see staggering numbers of nymphal husks and newly hatched adults crawling along the shore, eastern stoneflies rarely hit the water all at once. It’s mostly one here, one there. Come evening, you may see scatterings of egg-layers crash-landing in riffles, but that’s about as abundant as they get. An exception is on a dry, windy day right after a mass emergence. That’s when recently hatched adults can be blown off streamside vegetation by the hundreds before their wings fully dry, and the river boils with rising fish. But the combination of those perfect conditions happens about once every other leap year. If you stumble onto it, though, feel free to call or text me. Please.

For flies, traditional Stimulators, Sofa Pillows, and their ilk, in sizes 10 to as large as 6 certainly work, but my favorite is something I call the Hot Mess. I tie it on a size 8 2XL dry fly hook with a fuzzy body of either olive, cream, or yellow rabbit dubbing. Then I lock in a gob of stacked deer hair and pull it back to form a bullethead. The last step is crucial: I literally crumple the fly in my hand like a scrap of paper you’re about to toss in the garbage. This maneuver splays, folds, and kinks the hair wing, making it look like something that splattered on your windshield. Tied correctly, a Hot Mess doesn’t land in the water as much as it flops. And when it does, you twitch, water throws, a trout leaps.

Speaking of twitches, my own rule is to cast once or maybe twice and let the fly dead-drift. If nothing takes, I cast again, but check the rod high. When the fly lands (flops), I give it action so it jumps and daps in the current just like a floundering stonefly. I can’t tell you how many times that final quiver provokes a vicious take. If I can position myself to skip the bug upstream

instead of down, so much the better. For some reason, trout prefer their stones moving against the current, not with it.

Don’t play the waiting game and cast only when risers show. Fish the water. I like rocky riffles or swift, narrow slots against boulders. On smaller streams, tailouts between plunge pools— particularly if they gather a few bubble lines—are big medicine. And dammit man, cast. A lot. Put the fly here. Then over there. Twitch it in front of that boulder. Then next to another one. Use drag to your advantage. Think like a stonefly. Make that Hot Mess dance. You are looking for a trout that seems to have waited its whole life to crush that fly. When it does, set the hook and I dare you not to air guitar to The Ace of Spades with your five weight.

BRIAN O’KEEFE

Oregon may not rank as high as neighboring Idaho and Montana for bucket list dry fly fishing, but there are exceptions—March browns on the McKenzie, green drakes on the Metolius, Hexagenia on the Williamson . . . and, most notably, salmonflies on the lower Deschutes River.

In fact, my first great day on “the D” came with the salmonflies. But for some years, I grew disenchanted with the hatch. It can be erratic—the fish are on them one day and completely indifferent the next. If you’ve driven the 100-mile-each-way day trip from Portland, anticipating big things, and only roll a few dinks, it’s hard not to be a bit bitter. Especially after months of dour winter steelheading, when you don’t really expect to catch a fish—with trout, I kind of do! The salmonfly emergence seems to bring out every man and woman in the Beaver State who’s ever uttered the word trout . . . and quite a few from Washington and California too. Staked out in a favorite spot not far below the Warm Springs put-in, I once counted 40 drift boats in a two-hour period. (I stopped counting after that.) All these boats for a roughly eight-mile drift—a third of which is open for angling on only one side of the river, and where all fishing (with the exception of disabled anglers) is wade-only.

As I’ve grown older—and perhaps more patient—I’ve adjusted my expectations, learned to wait out the fish, and appreciated the salmonfly hatch as a chance to encounter the biggest redsides (a strain of rainbow endemic to the Columbia River basin) the Deschutes has to offer. I used to think these fish topped out at 20 inches, but I have learned that they can grow larger than that. My aging eyes also appreciate that I can actually tie the fly on without magnifiers and follow its drift.

The Deschutes drains much of the northern half of Central Oregon, beginning southwest of the city of Bend and flowing north to its terminus with the Columbia. While salmonflies occur in the Middle Deschutes (above Lake Billy Chinook and the Pelton Dam), most angling efforts focus on the 100 miles below the dam—that is, the Lower Deschutes. Stoneflies are present throughout, and the emergence can begin down low in early May. “The lower Deschutes is primarily thought of as a steelhead fishery, but there’s some great trout fishing,” said Sam Sickles of Steelhead Outfitters in Hood River. “There’s not much pressure in the lower twenty miles for trout, and that makes the fish

Salmonflies on the Big D

Deschutes River, Oregon By Chris Santella

happy and willing to eat drys.”

As upstream waters warm toward the mid-50s, the hatch migrates south, generally reaching the Maupin area by midMay, and the Warm Springs region by Memorial Day. Once the salmonflies start dropping, fish will be on them—some days better than others—for several weeks. (Around Warm Springs, the fish seem to be looking up for at least a week or two after the last naturals have vanished.) I used to think that mid-mornings, when the first breezes kicked up, were best; but I’ve had some fine early afternoons and evenings as well. On good days, fish seem to eat for a while, rest, then eat again.

While I have seen Deschutes rainbows hammer salmonflies (and their imitations) in riffles, on seam lines, and on featureless flats, many fish take up lies under or just downstream of alders and other streamside trees or bushes, sometimes in absurdly shallow water. Here, they’ll wait for bugs that have successfully shambled to shore and broken free from their shucks to be blown into the water. The Deschutes is a powerful river, and waist-deep wades (allowing you to cast back into shore) can be precarious. I prefer to get downstream from a fishy spot and sidearm a cast up and in. While I’m not opposed to prospecting, I’ve done better watching and waiting for a fish that’s working. (There’s where the slightly extra patience helps.) The trout I’ve targeted—especially the larger specimens—seem very particular about the bugs they eat . . . and I mean the naturals. I’ve watched them come up and refuse several naturals, only to take my bug. Go figure. A fly that’s been slapped or even jerked into position (to negotiate those branches) doesn’t seem to put them off, as long as there’s a drag-free drift when it reaches the fish.

What bug to use? Realistic foam imitations work well early in the hatch. If you begin seeing refusals, go to sparser pre-foam flies, such as Stimulators or Sofa Pillows. As the hatch winds down, it’s hard to beat a size 8 or 10 Chubby Chernobyl with a purple body. Look in any Deschutes regular’s fly box in May and early June, and that’s what you’ll find.

Chris Santella is the author of 22 books, including the Fifty Places series from Abrams. A frequent contributor to the New York Times and Washington Post, he also plays guitar in a roots rock band, Catch & Release.

There are many factions in the fly fishing community. Each has its own prejudices and preferences. Some are more self-isolating than others; the Atlantic salmon people would be in a state of unease talking to a carp person. They may even harbor a misguided sense of superiority. But in all of fly fishing, there is one fish that unites. One fish that no one could have any sort of feelings about, other than good ones—the brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis. (I have heard there are a weird few who don’t aspire to the King of American fishes, but why dawdle on deviant behavior?)

Brook trout are a native char whose beautiful colors and bighearted aggressiveness, including a willingness to crush dry flies, is proof to me of a higher power. What could be better than a brook trout? I sometimes ask. I can tell you the answer: big brook trout, meaning something capable of eating a mammal.

The greatest bastion of big brook trout is, by consensus and in the opinion of the late fly fishing god Lee Wulff, Labrador, Canada. Brook trout over three pounds are common there, and seven-to-eightpounders are a legitimate goal. Over that, a fish becomes legendary. There is a special reason why Labrador’s brook trout get so large—protein. They get it from eating mice and voles, but the bigger fish also find it available during the green drake hatch. That hatch is so incredible, I dream about it. In fact, I have spent many days and dollars to experience that monumental event. I feel as if it is on par with every great comet passing over, and to call the green drake emergence just another hatch would be like calling a dinosaur just another lizard. These bugs are big.

The Labrador green drake hatch requires a fly tied in size 4 and sometimes even larger. One of those bugs once landed on my arm. I wanted to see it up close so I swatted it and it went splat. It took two Kleenex tissues to wipe it off. First-timers seeing this bug might cry, “Holy drake!” or something like that.

To experience a hatch with such giant bugs being slurped down by giant brook trout is nirvana. There are men whose life quest is to search for the Holy Grail. Not me. Mine is to search for the Holy Drake.

In the month of July, in and around the Minipi River system, the hatch comes off. This giant drake is actually a special type of Hexagenia, a close relative to the legendary “Michigan mayfly” that comes off on that state’s Upper Peninsula. Both flies can exceed two inches long.

The green drake hatch does not come off in a flurry. The giant bugs seem to disperse almost evenly with four to five feet between them. The places I have fished the hatch were big waters. It is similar to fishing stillwaters. You observe rises and calculate the position of the fish. If you cast to the rise, you are doing it wrong. You cast to the anticipated direction of the fish and just above where you expect to see it again, like a form of hunting.

My best brook trout in Labrador, to date, is a seven-and-ahalf-pounder that put a permanent memory in a Rolf Baginski bamboo rod. It’s okay. The rod came with two tips.

The trout was released, and the tip is a permanent reminder of the trophy. If you go to Labrador, don’t ask about the Hex hatch. They won’t know what you are talking about. Those big flies are green drakes to everyone there. The trout don’t care what they’re called. They are just glad they are there, and so am I.

Jerry Hamza is an outdoor author published by Skyhorse Press and various outdoor publications. He is a fly fisherman and bamboo aficionado. His newest book, Fly Fishing and the Zen of Home Water, will be published in the spring of 2020.

Green Drakes in Brook Trout Nirvana

Labrador, Canada By Jerry Hamza

When a sunburned guy—roughly my age, roughly of the same economic status—stumbles out of the August glare and into my local fly shop to purchase a whole drawer full of size 10 foam hoppers, I know something is up.

He scoops up all the size 8 Panty Droppers and six dozen More or Less Hoppers, which makes the raid complete. His bill is over $300, and he doesn’t care. He’s in flip-flops. In one hand he holds a cone of melting frozen yogurt. He seems to have no compunction about dripping on the floor. He digs out his credit card and buys a hat on impulse. Then he’s gone, back out into the dusty Wyoming afternoon.

The North Platte is at its summer flow—3,000 CFS, and a bit off-color as it flows through the town of Casper, the slow stretches choked with weeds. The big crowds that come in April to catch pre-spawn rainbows have gone elsewhere. Usually, I spend my summer days fishing small streams or hiking up out of the heat to cast to cutties in alpine lakes. But there is a reason to stay closer to town in mid-August. It’s hopper season.

Right now, Natrona County is alive with hoppers—they’re everywhere. I see them in the roads or bouncing off the side of my car. Birds risk their lives snatching hoppers from the street. In every spiderweb, hoppers kick and struggle. They’re swarming the banks of the river, but they do their best to avoid the water. Some of these hoppers are tan; some are lime green. Some are speckled. With my ball cap, I net some from the willows. They don’t mind if I pick them up and study them. I toss the meanest ones into the thick current and watch for a rise. They kick like mad for the closest bank, knowing what lurks below.

Has it always been this way? I don’t recall the hopper phenomenon being a thing when I first arrived on the scene. Blake Jackson, owner of the Ugly Bug Fly Shop, says that a project to fence cattle off nine miles of riparian habitat on the upper river changed the entire food web.

“Cattle used to be in the river—on the banks, in the water— and there was hardly any vegetation,” he said. “It was a muddy mess. Once the cattle were off the banks, the willows and shrubs began to flourish. Next, we began to see a greater increase in insects, both in numbers and variety. “Blue wings, caddis, Tricos, PMDs—we have big hatches now,” Jackson added. “Heck, I didn’t see a yellow sally the first five years I guided here. Now you see them all the time.”

Jackson believes bank restoration is the key, and that hopper numbers have grown correspondingly. Now, with scorching summers and Wyoming winds, the annual hopper invasion is something you can count on. The fish count on them too. Suddenly, thousands of 18-to-20-inch fish—which spend the majority of their secretive lives with their bellies touching the riverbed—are looking up. Your chance at a fish over 20 inches on a dry fly is entirely possible here.

Last summer, Bill and Mackenzie Mixer allowed me to tag along on one of their annual father-daughter hopper floats.

The Hopper Blow

They were hitting the river hard during the last few weeks of summer. Mackenzie, who lives in Denver, became a no-show at most of her social events and had been buying one-day fishing licenses for weeks. She had every intention of leaving town, but she stayed to ride out the hatch. And I didn’t blame her.

So with a vague sense of when all this might end, Bill, Mackenzie, and I met at noon. There was no rush, no acrid coffee, no squeeze at the boat ramp. With hoppers, you need only the afternoons, and you want some wind, which is in ample supply. And it would be great, Bill and I agreed, if we could pay some kid 20 bucks or so to ride a mountain bike along the willows at roughly the same speed as our boat, a kid who could whack the bushes to encourage more hoppers into the water. But that sort of thing is frowned upon.

Bill and Mackenzie fell into a fugue state where the days in sunlight begin to blur. They bought their Gatorade and sandwiches in the morning. They hit the river by noon and weren’t off until near dark. This process repeated itself until no one knew how many days they’ve been at it, or how many fish came to the hoppers, and how many terrible grabs they missed. By the time I joined them, they had given up on using droppers, but had fallen into the crude habit of using a double hopper rig where the goal is to splat your flies as violently as possible and as close to the bank as you dared. Bill bit one back leg off his Panty Dropper. He said it made it look more authentic.

Bill preaches the religion wherein you cast as close to the

The Hopper Blow

shore as possible and let your fly drift along the cutbanks. I disagreed with him on this, but who am I to question his methods? I saw fish take hoppers in the middle of the river all afternoon. But the real action was just under the grassy cutbanks. “Trespass if you have to,” he said. He was right, just this once. The brown trout appeared out of a weedy bay and smashed my fly, a size 10 Delecktable Munchkin, one of the few hopper patterns still available once the drawers at the fly shops are ravished. (By then, the guides were writing their river reports in all caps: HOPPER FISHING IS PEAKING Y’ALL.) But there was none of that panic in Bill’s boat.

I even got a chance to row after boating a few fish. I tried to keep Mackenzie in the optimal spot, and Bill out of the zone, but once, while his daughter was tangled, he got his shot at 30 yards of virgin cutbank. He connected on the fish of the day—a 24-inch wild brown trout with bluish overtones.

Who knew how long this “hopper chautauqua” would last? For the time being, Mackenzie was staying in Wyoming. You wouldn’t find her in Denver, at the hipster oyster and martini bar called Angelo’s; her job search stalled. She wasn’t returning her new boyfriend’s calls—he was 36, I learned, and kept a collection of succulents. She stayed in the bow of Bill’s boat, casting foam hoppers at the shore, as close as she dared, almost into the ranchers’ fields.

Dave Zoby is a freelance writer who splits time between Wyoming and Alaska when he isn’t teaching English at Casper College.

North Platte, Wyoming By Dave Zoby

Land Between the Lakes, Tennessee By Jen Ripple

Willow Flies

The gray sky loomed overhead like a thick blanket of smoke. It was February, but it may as well have been November. In Chicago, the winter months blur together. Icy snowflakes the size of pinheads spit down on my windshield, and broken lawn chairs of every kind littered the side street, claiming coveted parking spots. White-knuckled, I pulled into the grocery store parking lot. I have got to get out of here, I thought for the 10th time that week. I opened Google Maps, saw a thick band of blue, and made a call to a man named Dana. A few months later, I packed my bags and moved seven hours due south of the Windy City, into a cabin in the woods. Dover, Tennessee, is a sleepy little town that lies at the base of the largest inland peninsula in the country. Bordered on the west by Kentucky Lake and the east by Lake Barkley, the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is home to 300 miles of natural shoreline, 170,000 acres of beautiful public land, and a plethora of big bass water.

Another few months slipped by before I found the time to put the boat in the water. The dog days of summer made it hotter than the chicken in Nashville, but you weren’t hearing me complain. My little white Wellcraft seemed to silently scream, I don’t have enough glitter! as my partner in crime and I passed a line of professional bass boats at the ramp, each with a fancy matching truck. What have I gotten myself into? I thought. Big water, professional bass anglers, and not a fly rod in sight. My kind of place.

Water temperatures had passed the 80-degree mark, and I knew from past experience that it was an intermediate and sinking line type of day. The big boys would be holding on the ledges in deep water, making them difficult to target. I tied a yellow-andwhite Clouser to the end of my tippet. If I was going to catch bass, it would be on a Clouser. Everyone knows bass eat Clousers.

My partner and I spent the next couple of hours unsuccessfully casting to fish we knew had to be there. After a cold one to change up the mojo, we took a boat ride to find new water. Approaching shore, we saw the water boiling with activity under an overhanging tree branch. Eager to catch anything at this point, I pulled out a smaller rod I’d rigged with floating line and thrown in the boat as a Hail Mary. I quickly peeled line off and made a cast. In my haste to get the fly into the activity, I chucked it smack-dab into the tree. I said a few words that would make my mother cringe, then tugged on my line to see if I could get the fly free. The tree exploded into a giant swarm of the largest mayflies I had ever seen. I stood there dumbfounded. Huge mayflies, on a bass lake, in the heat of the day? As we approached the tree to retrieve my fly, they swarmed the boat so thick it was hard to breathe. In response, big bass came from below, inhaling flies that landed on the surface, leaving carnage in their wake. Just like that, the fishing took off, with many big bass in the boat that day . . . and every similar hatch day since.

The locals, whose ranks I have joined call these mayflies willow flies. Greenish brown in color, they are very similar to the green drake found on the famed trout waters of Pennsylvania. Small willows are easily one to two inches long, with the larger willows reaching upwards of three inches. The arrival of the willow fly hatch each year excites anglers and car washes alike, and wakes up this sleepy town. A walk into the local barbershop or Piggly Wiggly in early summer has the air abuzz with talk about the impending hatch.

Don’t let the glitz and glitter of bass boats scare you away. The willow hatch is easy to fish. There are many places in the Land Between the Lakes to access the water with or without a boat, and it can be easily accessed with a kayak. Oh, and don’t forget your floating line. As I discovered, the big boys come up to play when the sun is high and the heat is on.

Jen Ripple is the editor of DUN magazine, which focuses on women in fly fishing. She is on the board of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association.

August on northwestern Connecticut’s Housatonic River is intensely humid and hot. The summer sun that perfectly dries timothy and orchard grass, batched as square hay bales, scorches the trout stream so much that fishing is closed around feeder streams. Still, we fish the river, even under bright blue skies.

Call me crazy, for I sweated like a baller running two-a-days. I concentrated on river smallies hanging inside velocity changes around the pocket-water boulder fields. Giant golden stoneflies crawled onto the rocks, and a bass grabbed nearly every yellow Stimulator I bounced off a rock. It was a fun way to kill time until the sulking browns and rainbows, which range between 15 and 22 inches, came out after nightfall. In the original Mohican, Housatonic means “beyond the mountain.” That’s where the sun was going—and when it was dark, the main event would kick off. Summer is Ephoron leukon season, a crazy nighttime hatch of white flies easily matched by a size 12 White Wulff. Sometimes the hatch starts as soon as the sun drops, around 8 p.m., while other times it begins as late as midnight. And when it begins, it is as bizarre as it gets.

For starters, this fast-moving hatch runs contrary to the normal summer laziness. Males hatch up to two hours before the females, a factor that contributes to a highly interesting situation. Male nymphs crawl out of their shucks and quickly morph into duns. Theirs is not a gentleman’s float down the river complete with a quaint session of drying wings followed by a dainty flight into the willows. No, Ephoron leukon’s is a wham, bam, thank you, ma’am back alley deal. They get out of the water, turn to duns, and fly away. A short while later, they morph into spinners, and they wait until the ladies arrive.

You see, by the time the females arrive, the males’ sexual appetites are ravenous. The fact that females mate in the dun stage means aggressive males pounce on them when they’re still on the water. The mating is over quickly, but the males don’t swarm together, create a buzzing hum, and drop at the same time. No, they fall from the sky one by one. That means that just as bugs consistently exit the water, they consistently fall out of the night sky. The females bug out, flying far, far upriver. They’ll deposit their eggs, die, and drift downstream. It’s a melee of a hatch, with some trout rising rhythmically while others splash so vigorously that you’d swear they were eating caddis.

One night, everyone must have been at a barbecue, for I was alone on the river. I didn’t need to fight a crowd for a prime slot, but I nevertheless shuffled to a midstream point in the long, silty pool with no trees to snag, and brightness coming from the stars and the moon. Earlier, during daylight, I’d scouted out a feeding lane where I figured some good trout to be. Now I tied on a big, high-floating white fly imitation and trailed a size 14 gray nymph off it. All that was left was to dead-drift that Wulff in the feeding lane and hook up. The only problem is that drag-free drifts are more challenging at night than you’d think.

A human’s eyeball isn’t built for night vision, you see. Look at a target and you can’t focus. To maximize the minimal light, you’ve got to view the target from the corner of your eye. Relax, fish a short line, and mend even if you don’t think you need to. That’s just what I did when the pool came alive.

Fish the white fly hatch at least once in your life. And after you’ve caught some fish, be sure to take a pause. There are so many moving parts to this wonderful event that you owe it to yourself to crouch down low in the water and shine your flashlight along the water’s surface toward the pines. You’ll bear witness to nature in its raw state, and it’ll be worth it.

Tom Keer is an award-winning freelance writer, book author, and owner of a fish/hunt marketing company, The Keer Group. Visit him at www.thekeergroup.com or www.tomkeer.com.

Go East, for Summer’s Blizzard Hatch

White Flies, Northwest Connecticut By Tom Keer