The Big Time

The big time for fly-fishermen has arrived. The major hatches of aquatic mayflies are going to be hatching from area trout streams for the next five or six weeks and trout are going to be gorging on this annual spring feast.

The most prolific of these hatches around the Cove is a hatch of mayflies known as sulphurs. The hatch of sulphurs has already begun on several area streams. By the end of the month, sulphurs will have appeared on nearly every stream in the area.

Since it is the best hatch of the season in most places, it draws hordes of fly-fishermen to many streams, especially the BFO (big, famous, overfished) River. During the height of the hatch, it is impossible to find more than 50 yards of water to fish on the BFO many evenings. Hoping to find an evening with few fly-fishermen on the water, I make several trips to the BFO each spring. More often than not, I leave for another stream where there are not as many fishermen.

The sulphurs draw many trout to the surface to feed on them as they drift downstream. If a fly-fisherman has a good imitation of the real bugs, he can be in for some exiting fishing.

The earlier hatches sometimes last for a couple of hours, especially during damp, drizzly afternoons when the bugs have trouble drying their wings to fly off the water. They are "easy pickings" for the fish. Size 14 dry-fly imitations are useful during the early going. As May advances and the buttery-colored mayflies become somewhat smaller, size 16 or even 18 imitations become more appropriate.

Even some of a stream's larger trout will come to the surface to feed. For the past several seasons, I have landed my largest dry-fly-caught trout on sulphur imitations. Two years ago, it was a 23-inch trout on the BFO. Though I was excited to catch and release it, I was also significantly disappointed that it was a rainbow, not a wild trout. Last year the biggest was a 20-inch wild brown trout, which I considered my "fish of the year."

Another hatch of mayflies, a week-long hatch that begins close to Memorial Day, is a hatch of large mayflies known as green drakes. According the veteran fly-fishermen of my youth, these flies disappeared about 1954 on most local creeks, though there is still a hatch of them on one area stream.

One event can wipe out much of this dry-fly fishing – a big spring flood. I hope that doesn't happen this year.