Quiet, back bay…

of a lake, lined with tall reeds. The bottom drops off quickly and the tinted waters are about 10′ deep in no time. Weed pods reach the surface here and there. The wind is not reaching this spot on the lake. It’s early morning and calm. The surface is still save insects coming off the surface and sizable swirls and waves caused by a cruising, large trout working just below the surface on emerging insects.

This was not a place for a horizontal presentation via an Intermediate, slow sink line. I decided upon a Stimulator dry fly on the surface with a chironomid pupa pattern as a dropper pattern some four feet beneath the surface. A soft, turn over cast plopped the offerings into the channels amongst the weeds.  The take was powerfully slow. The dropper was taken and the surface dry fly disappeared away from me. I raised the rod tip, gave a slip strike and expected to feel the power of my rod challenged by a nice fish. My rod and then my wrist felt more than the usual thrust of power. My boat took a lurch toward the fish so strong was the surge away. A nice battle ensued amongst the weeds. The calm water was thrashed as the trout went airborne and came down broadside to create quite the splash. I enjoyed the fight but knew I wanted the fish in sooner than later to spare it too much stress as I planned to release the fish. A quick snap in the shallows and the nice fish was released as its powerful tail thrust pushed the trout away.

Midges (Dinky Droppers)

Nothing much to these lil’ flies. They simply reinforce my love of peacock as one of the 5 best materials (don’t ask) and the fuzziness of wrapped turkey feather fibers turned out to be much fuzzier than when I recently used it for a BWO pattern. This fuzziness is akin to wrapped pheasant tail barbs. Fragile though, hence the ribbing. But, the turkey did give a nice fuzzy look. Also, look at that bottom pattern. I used the most miniscule piece of Rootbeer Krystal Flash, but look at the twist to it and the colors. I tied all these smaller on the size 16 hook. I also didn’t resort to the curved shank pupa hook. Mostly just dinking around to see how materials look through the lens and to play with presentation. Winter/early spring are great times to fish small midges given the limited hatches.