To me dry fly fishing is the most enjoyable and exciting type of fishing available to an angler today. The weather, the scenery and the relaxing pace of life that takes place during the summer trout season will only amplify your time on the water. The visual aspect associated with a fish rising rhythm on the surface just gets my adrenaline cranking! There is no other form of fishing that can even match the excitement of fishing a dry fly for surface feeding trout. The addiction begins once you get a fish rising and with your target spotted you now become the hunter.
The stalk is now in full effect as you approach your quarry, observing behaviour and studying everything moving on the waters surface. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together can sometimes be as simple as matching your fly to the obvious bugs. To play the game and try to figure out not only what the fish is eating, but also at what level in the water column is the fish feeding. These are the challenges that make dry fly fishing a challenging yet rewarding experience. As our hatches progress into late May we start to leave the realm of the dainty BWO’s, Sulphurs, and Mahoganies and enter the world of the larger Mayflies such as the Green Drake, Isonychia, and Hex hatches. These are the hatches that occur at the peak of the dry fly season and trying to time their beginnings keeps many an angler up late at night checking all the blogs and fishing reports for the first sightings and hearing those words “It’s on!”
As we enter late May and June most of the larger trout will cease to frequently chase streamers and shift their diets to a bug oriented forage base while focusing more of their attention on the surface. This situation allows the fly angler to target just about every fish in the system as the hatches begin to strengthen and the trout begin to capitalize on the larger insects that are now available to them. Now is the time that our trophy sized trout become more susceptible to the dry fly, especially the larger patterns used to imitate our larger hatches. Tight line and good fishing! Michael Wong
