THE SULPHURS ARE COMING BY JOHN BERRY

The caddis hatch is, on the wane. I must say that I truly enjoyed it. For once, we had near perfect water conditions. We were blessed with low flows for most, of the time, the caddis were hatching. I was lucky enough to catch it several times and was even able to fish it myself, on three occasions. There is nothing more rewarding than sight casting to a big trout and having them take your dry fly. I was also able to put my clients on some great hatchs and have them take trout on dry flies.

Now it is time, for the sulphur hatch. This is our premier mayfly hatch, of the year, and it generally occurs during May and June. This is a solid size fourteen yellow orange mayfly. It is best imitated, with a copper John or pheasant tail nymph, for the nymphal stage, a partridge and orange soft hackle, for the emergence, and a sulphur parachute, for the adult stage. All should be in size sixteen and fourteen.

I generally fish the pheasant tail nymph before the hatch begins. This is when the nymphs will be more active. Once I see trout feeding, on the surface, but see no insects, I will switch over to the partridge and orange soft hackle. Then, when I see trout taking insects from the surface, I switch over to a dry fly, to match the adult. I often find that I catch more trout, on the nymph or the soft hackle. I will occasionally fish them, when the trout are keying in, on the adults. The only problem is that there is nothing that gets my adrenaline pumping, like the take, of a dry fly.

There are a few things to keep in mind, if you want to maximize your success, when fishing dries. The key is to present the fly, with a perfect drag free float. You want to mend effectively. If the fly is in fast water and the fly line is in slow water, you will mend the line downstream. If the fly is in slow water and the line is in fast water, you should mend upstream. The trick is to not move the fly, when you make your mend.

Line control, is also very important. The line has to have enough slack in it for you to achieve a perfect drag free float. At the same time, the line has to be tight enough for you to be able to set the hook. The key here is to fish as short a line as possible. The more line you have out the more likely you are to have excess slack. The more slack you have the more difficult it is, to set the hook. There are a lot of anglers out there who are just not happy unless they are casting as much line as they possibly can.  I usually only fish about twenty feet and I catch plenty of trout.

Now, what is the prediction for the upcoming sulphur hatch? We have had a lot of rain lately (it is raining, as I write this) and the lakes are on the rise. When I checked the lake levels this morning, I noted that they were all up several feet and were well into flood pool. That tells me that we are going to get more generation and have less wadable water. It is hard to fish dries on high water. That means that we will be fishing more sulphur nymphs than dry flies, in the coming days.