Night Hatch 2.0

Last night was another night to fish the light cahill hatch at dusk. I got on the water early and started using an ice shrimp muddler, hoping for a few nice smallmouth bass. I was surprised when the second fish to take the fly was a nice rainbow trout. I was even more surprised when the third was another rainbow that fought incredibly hard. Then I managed few dinky smallmouth before the start of the hatch and the switch to dry flies.

When the fish began to rise I put on an Ausable Bomber and caught some small fallfish and smallmouth. As it got darker I up-sized and matched the big mayflies that were just beginning to show up. By the time the trout had keyed in on the bugs, both spinners and duns were on the water in increasing numbers, I had gone up to a size 10 White Wulff. When it got to dark for that I changed to a size 6 Stimulator. The last fish of the night was rising loudly in the riffle at the head of the pool and took the stimulator skated, which was good because I would not have felt or seen the take if it was dead drifted.

After releasing that fish I took out the flashlight to see how many bugs were coming off, and boy there were a lot!!!! There were also some enormous stoneflies flying about.

Now this is a ton of mayflies!

\

Trout are not the only things that eat mayflies.