There is a certain sweet pain in watching a three-and-a-half-pound wild rainbow launch itself into the air to blast a struggling mayfly, then cast your dry fly a dozen times over the fish’s lie without response. I feel that pain… deeply.
Yes, there have been a few Green Drakes this year, seemingly part of Nature’s gift of multitudes of bright water that has befuddled wading anglers for much of the prime time of the season. There have been some Gray Fox too, the first time I have seen these beautiful big mayflies in several years. The trout have been eating them selectively, that is, they have been eating those in transformation from nymph to dun as they struggle to rise to the surface.
My best dun has produced one 22-inch brownie and one splashy refusal. The emerger that fooled my best Catskill brown trout has been ignored. Soft hackles in the film, both dead drifted and gently swung – nothing. It is both Heaven and Hell for the dry fly angler. Nothing man may contrive from fur, feathers and steel will wiggle and squirm as it swims to the surface like those big mayflies.
Sometime in the middle of the night, my mind was working, conceiving the fly at the top of the page. By four thirty AM I was up and headed here to my tying bench. Just a few little touches: the partially shed shuck, the bright yellow-green ribbed abdomen, the struggling legs and a shortened, emergent wing. Can they make the difference? Might this new pattern flip the switch in a few of those big trouts’ predatory brains and light the Free Meal lamp? I will do my best to find out…
Bright Waters Catskill 