A Hatch at Last!

I heard them even before I could see the river. Splash! Kerplunk! Whoosh!

We've waited patiently(?) through a turbulent spring season, seeing some light hatches of Blue-Winged Olives, even a thin midge hatch, but the night before last was too good to miss.

I had anticipated a trial of a new (to me) pattern that I call a flashy burger, a hybrid between a woolly bugger and a slump buster. I tie it with a brass or black cone head in olive, black, or dark brown on size 8 and larger hooks. Think of a woolly bugger wrapped over by a sparse, dark, flashabou hackle. But, I simply had to tie on a large (#12) elk hair caddis when I saw the surface just popping with fish.

As soon as I stepped into the water, a large light brown caddis climbed up to safe refuge on my waders. Multiple rises from the bow wave of my boots all the way across the river, with the largest fish just beyond the reach of my 3-weight rod. I know they were larger because that is how I measure the reach of my cast.  If I can't quite get there,  they're bigger than anything I've already caught.

And so, for the next hour, the rigors of the day now closing dissolved into the white noise of slurping brown trout, honking geese and a pulsing, thrumming rod tip. The trout, too, however briefly, seemed over-joyed to escape their aqueous tether, only to return again, replenishing their diets and my spirits, and promising even greater escapades in the weeks and months ahead.