Flybox Fox Trot.

I love taking fish off the top. This was something that came with me from spin fishing. I was a topwater junkie by 6. Watching bass smash a Hula Popper was one of my favourite sights. With trout.........the sight of rising fish is just glorious. Its a beautiful sight, watching the trout take thier dinner from the surface. Sometimes, the fish have manners. Lightly picking their dinner fare from the surface. At other times, they are like Homer Simpson at a doughnut eating contest...........smashing the surface to inhale their favoured fare of the day. For me..........surface feeders usually foreshadow a good day of fishing..........if you can find the key.

If you can`t match the hatch, that can lead to some major frustrations. Having a river full of fish rising, but only manage one or two............well, thats an epic fail on our parts. We missed the match. It happens. If you haven`t encountered a specific hatch, you may not have a suitable imitation for it.......so, its back to the vise and a shot at redemption the next day. All pretty straight forward.

Then............there are days where not only do you encounter every fish in the river rising, but also every available insect hatching. This can present a whole new set of problems which can be found under the header, `Complex Hatch`. A complex hatch can be a difficult one to contend with. Even if you do have a match to what the insects have keyed on, you still have to figure it out, and put it on in time. Often, fish will have zoned in on one hatch, often the most prolific. This is good. You find the key, tie it on, and catch fish. Easy peasy, almost as if the competing hatches don`t exist. But things can get much more irksome.

What if some fish are on one bug, then switch to another.....or another stage of the same bug. What if different fish, are on different bugs? You can be dancing through your flybox looking for that right fly, for the right fish, In a limited time. I came across the most shining example of such a complex hatch the other night. Various Caddis, Light Cahills, BWO's, Cranes.......all coming off, or coming down. I had hit the water at around 4:30'ish and sat to watch a section of river that was devoid of trout rising. Chubs were going nuts. There were decent numbers of Cahills coming off since around noon, and the little guys were sucking them up. Fish attacking insects larger than themselves. I will not be surprised when I finally see a mayfly take off with a tiny fish latched to its leg. It had been an odd day. The morning never really took off. I watched a lot of water flow past without much happening. Sporadically checking the river throughout the day yeilded no results. So, I was realatively confident something should happen. When it did, it was fast, furious and frantic.

For 2 hrs only a very occasional trout showed itself. Then a number of trout started moving on bugs at the same moment. In a couple of minutes the entire river was full of risers.........taking emergers ( and the occasional dun ). Including a decent fish. SO, I slowly got into the water and moved into a position were I could observe that fish. It was pushing good water, and defintely on emergers. A day earlier fish here had been taking Cahill emergers. I was confident they'd be on that today. That was actually the plan. Beat up the fish on Cahill emergers. So I wasn't surprised when my first cast into its feeding lane was sucked up without hesitation. It was a very short hook up, but good enough to make sure that particular fish wouldn't show himself again. Oh well, onto other fish and successes. However, after a relatively brief burst of productiveness, the fly stopped producing. WTF? Something else had changed........the rise forms. They were now sipping and splashing rise forms. I could see no Adult Caddis or may duns getting sucked up..............so I was thinking something small, or difficult to see. My first though was...Black Caddis, Spent Caddis, Cranes, or BWO's. A look into the drink showed numerous cranes. The splashing and sipping is something I associate both with the crane........so on went the crane. Instant and undeniable success! Yippee. But wait! Whats this? After another brief window my fly is ineffective. Fish are now all splashy. Hmmmm........lots a caddis? Which one? After flipping through my caddis, leaving my box in disarray, I find more immediate success on a #20 TanTan Caddis. Kewl. Ask me how surprised I was when the fish all started sipping shortly after.
Here I got stuck. At first, I tried a BWO......as the days weather had me thinking they should make an appearence. My #20 dun and emerger patterns got rejected. A former guide/friend tells me the were smashing #22 Bwo's in the upper stretches. I hadn't come across any BWO's that small before ( edit: Yes I have...........somehow brain cramped on this. )and had none in my box. Or if I had, a 20 had sufficed. However, when I was rejected...I had a good long look at the drink and saw the #22 spinners. I first tried a #20 color appropriate spinner. First cast.........rejected. It was a little large, but I liked the attention. So, on goes a 22 spinner. Instant success! Problem solved. Of course, when I dealt with that fish, and looked to the river............there was now no fish moving anywhere. At all. Nothing.

SO it was off to the bank for a rest and a look see. Then a short time later back to the campsite. All of the activity had taken place within a two hour period!!!!

Oddly enough I had been talking to an angler the other night, who had related to me something he had read about the different types of anglers. One type, is the type that falls into the 'as many as possible' category. Next, was the 'biggest possible'. And last we had ' size, numbers not as much, as technical as possible.' I like to believe I fall into the third category, having worked through the first two.

In my opinion, working through a complex hatch can be difficult enough. Often, we can get lucky and the key is fish are on one of the hatches and stuck there. Having to go through a night like I did was definetly an exception. And with such a short window on each bug? I can't remember that happening to me before. It may have, but I can't remember it. In order to keep step at all, I had to be stocked with the requisite flies. I had anticapated to be fishing to trout on Cahill emergers. That I had the needed flies ( with the excetion of 22 BWO's ), spoke more to preparedness than blind luck. I was happy about that. I also thoroughly enjoy figuring out fish. Waiting, watching, then talking a fish into taking the first cast gets my rocks off. When its a good fish, its as close to perfection as I've experienced on this plane.............well short of the aid from hallucingenic substances. For one brief moment, you were perfect in the eye's of the fish, and god.

I would have been far more successful had the fish kindly done as I hoped and stayed on the Cahill emergers for the night. Just the changing of flies and tippet cost me valuable time. However, I was savvy enough to be aware of the changing rise pattern, and check the drink for the cause. And I figured the fish. And while I havehad much better days on the water in terms of fish numbers and size, not all will be remembered as long as this evening, when I and the trout did the flybox fox trot.


edit: I more than certainly familiar with #22 BWO's. I have dozens of them tied up in my UC box............and a look at one of my older sites reaffirmed this. Can't explain this brain cramp. Maybe 4 seasons off? More likely Ian Martins evil little book on the Grands Hatches that has misinformed me more than once. I had been pouring over that lately and poisoning my brain once again.