Dry or Die

Sometimes it just has to be dry flies. It's almost magical. Insects burst from the bottom of stream, floating to the surface or swimming to the shore. The ones that make it to the surface are at the mercy of the current for the short time it takes for their wings to dry. Trout see them and tip up there heads, effortlessly moving to grab the little helpless bugs. Fishing magic.

I love technical dry fly fishing. I love matching the hatch, presenting the fly, working the most difficult fish in the pool... any fly fisherman can take the fish sitting in evenly paced current taking mayflies consistently, but it is far more enjoyable for me to fish to and fool even a small brown rising for small caddis on the other side of a deep pool with a strong current and boiling water, in a spot with trees ten feet behind me. I made a number of attempts to get this fish from it's side of the pool but it would spook each time. I made the best of it. I find that doing a single spey cast on a long one handed rod can get a very accurate thirty foot roll cast in the wind. Having the means to get the fly to the fish I began to inspect the subtleties of the presentation. I could not for the life of me see a size 18 caddis at that distance, so I changed flies. I thought for a while about what I should use. I ended up tying on a size 12 light hendrickson. I could see it easily, control it's drift more readily, and I figured the fish wasn't going to be too picky. I timed the rise and made the cast and a quick mend. The drift was only a few feet. The fish did not take. I put the fly back a foot and it took. I made a long sweeping set and was in. It was a small stocked brown. But that wasn't the point. The point was simply that I caught the most difficult fish in the pool. That is probably the only fish of many today that I will remember in a month or two.