Summer Solstice has come in Montana. A brief pause cosmic in our parabola through the fishing season. A change of weather from blustery rain-logged mornings to the high cloudless heat of July, and a change in hatches to go along with it. Fishing remains the same: consistent, sometimes very good sometimes spectacular. Old and young, novice and expert alike are putting the wood to some very nice trout lately on the Bitterroot and Blackfoot. Salmonflies are still very much a thing on the Blackfoot canyon as the traffic and fish tales can attest. Keep the orange #4's on for a little while longer. Around the lower Root' there are stirrings of another famous hatch but of the sleeker mayfly persuasion. Green Drakes on the menu and the fish are loving it!
Why do Mayflies stir the flyfisher soul as they do? Why do we long for the bewitching hour of mid-day for the first sings of an emergence? Sure the stoneflies have their adherents (myself being one of them of course) but stately mayfly sailboats drifting down to eager trout is what summer dreams are made of. The PMD's are here of course, as they are state-wide right now, but intermixed are the big bugs : Two, three, four at a time in a particular run then not for a mile. I imagine Green Drakes to think they are F16's but find out the hard that they handle more like Sikorsky heliocopters. Barely holding it together with the whole flying thing they find their way into the water often and the fish take notice. Flicking the big mayfly can pay large dividends even without seeing lots of them. The fish know. They know.. . .
Recipe for BRG Green Drake :
Tiemco 100, #10
Olive Dun Uni
Wing : Nat' Elk Hair wing, tied parachute or thorax
Tail : Moose Mane dyed drk. Brown
Body : 1/2 haresear , 1/2 med. olive (both MT Fly Co.)
Hackle : Grizzly, and lots to float this damm giant thing
And Now, Let There Be Rock
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