Winged Wets

"It has been advanced as an argument against the use of the wet fly, that duns and other small insects which drift drift down upon the surface of a stream are never seen by the fish underwater, and that a wet fly is therefore an unnatural object, especially if winged. 'Never' is a big word and I venture to think the case is overstated. I have watched an eddy with little swirling whirlpools in it for an hour together, and again and again I have seen little groups of flies caught in one or other of the whirls, sucked under and thrown scatterwise through the water, to drift some distance before reaching the surface."

Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream Angler and Kindred Studies, G.E.M. Skues, 1910

Plate from W.-C.-Stewart's book The Practical Angler. 

    The winged wet fly is only uncommonly found in a modern fisherman's fly box.  In the 1950's and early 60's they were standards, but today they are essentially gone.  G.E.M. Skues developed modern upstream wet fly fishing techniques for English chalk streams and accompanying patterns in the early part of the last century.  Chalk streams provide notoriously technical fishing because of the clarity of the water.  They provide an ideal environment that produces abundant insect life and hence large trout.  The Scottish fisherman and writer W. C. Stewart anticipated Skues by more than 50 years, in 1857 he published his book The Practical Angler -or- The Art of Trout-Fishing More Particularly Applied to Clear Water.  I find it astounding to think that Stewart's book was written before the Civil War.  Stewart's book reads as an exceptionally modern account of fishing upstream with the wet fly.

W.C. Stewart and his mentor James Ballie

Years ago I managed to find a fifth edition of the book published in London in 1907 by Adam and Charles Black.  A.C. Black published many of the classic British fly fishing books including Skues' books.  Stewart is famous for his "spiders" which are the ancestors of modern soft hackles.  The plates in my copy of his book [photo above] also show many winged wets.

Some Stewart inspired winged wets for the BWO hatch.

I am tying some flies in anticipation of a trip to the Green below Flaming Gorge reservoir next weekend. We're hoping to catch the famous BWO hatch.  Inspired by winged flies of Stewart and Skues  I have tied a few winged wets.  Stewart's stream flies do not typically sport tails while his loch flies do.  It may be presumptuous to publish my pattern here before I test it - but here it is.

                      BWO Winged Wet
         Hook: size 16-18 Dai-Riki #135
         Thread: brown olive thread
         Body: Golden Olive SLF squirrel spikey dubbing
         Tail: a few fibers from a Wood Duck flank feather
         Wing: light gray tips of Blue Grouse tail feather.

A Day on the Green

Leopard spotted brown. 

After working every day but one for the past month, I managed to take a day to fish the Green River on my drive home from a conference in Utah.  The Green River below the Flaming Gorge dam in Utah is a world class fishery.  There are reportedly 20,000 fish per mile and I believe it. The "A section" extends seven miles downstream from the Flaming Gorge dam to Little Hole.I'd planned to fish downstream from the dam access but I abandoned that plan because of the crowd.  Instead I drove downstream to the Little Hole access.  The parking lot there was nearly empty when I arrived at 9:30 AM.  It's the takeout for boats floating from the dam and by afternoon it is filled with trucks towing trailers that have been shuttled down during the day.

It turned out to be a very good day. Saddly, I was a week late for the Blue Winged Olive hatch, though a few olives did come off during the day. Even so, the fish were still keyed in on BWO nymphs, and I caught as many fish as I care to in a day. I know because I lost count. If I had to guess I landed 15 and hooked about twice that many.  None of the fish I landed was under 15" and none were over 20".  All of them took my Black Back Wet Dream.

BBWD tied on a size 20 Dai-Riki #135 hook - black flashback.

I tie this version of the WD on size 18-22 Dai_Riki #135 hooks.

Black Back Wet Dream (BBWD)
Hook: size 18-22 scud/pupa hook
Body:  olive or  brown olive thread
Tail: a few fibers from a Wood Duck  flank feather
Thorax: tan/brown dubbing
Wing Case:  Black Holo-Tinsel

In the pictured fly I used 70 denier brown olive Ultra thread, the thorax is SLF Spikey Dubbing in natural fox color and the wing case is black Holo Tinsel.   It is a synthesis of Mark Engler's original WD (wet dream) pattern with a flashier version of Randy Smith's Tyvek Baetis.  Engler's pattern was renamed the WD-40 by  Umpqua when they commercialised it - so as not to offend delicate sensibilities. I do not share their compuction. Many folks assume the WD stands for "wood duck".  Good marketing at work I guess.  Smith's pattern uses a wing case tied from Tyvek that has been colored black.  Mine uses black holo-tinsel.   Feel free to tie as many as you like, it's proving to be an amazingly effective pattern, but also, consider this post a copyright on the pattern should you want to commercialize it.

An eighteen incher.

The Green is primarily a brown trout fishery although I did catch some nice rainbows too, fat fish. These fish are heavily pressured and can be selective feeders.  The water is extraordinarily clear and good sized fish hang on the banks. You see many many of them as you hike up the trail.  It can be a frustrating experience for the tyro to fish to one of these large trout, clearly on the feed, in shallow water.  There is nothing more satisfying than taking one of these fish.  Once again, I complain that the fly shops are pushing the big flies to novices because so many fisherman are reluctant to fish the small flies.  The green has a good hatch of cicadas and a big black foam fly is a common pattern there.  Later in the summer there is good hopper fishing as well.  The fly shops are starting to push those flies though I did not see one cicada nor did I see any hoppers.

I met a man on the trial who I took to be from Oregon since he talked about fishing to spawning rainbows on the Williamson River. These are fish that run up out of Klamath Lake. He seemed somewhat disappointed with the Green in comparison. He said he'd done well the day before but he complained that he'd had to fish size 20 flies.  When I first met him he was fishing a cicada and when I saw him later had a streamer tied on.  By that time he'd had one hook-up.  Somewhat hopefully, he told me how he'd met someone the day before who frequently fishes the Green and who prefers to tie on an Adams or a Royal Coachman. A size 20 Adams would actually be a decent imitation of a BWO and there is a kind of local beetle with red/orange colouring. So who knows, maybe an Adams or a Royal Coachman would be just the ticket.  I expressed my doubts which prompted him to walk on.

Looking down into Little Hole on my way out at about five-thirty.

The Green is a great river.  I caught it yesterday at an in between stage, after the BWO hatch but before the summer hatches.   I promise myself that next year I will catch the BWO hatch.

Wanted: A Blue Winged Olive Hatch

A wild brown that took a BWO imitation.

It's that time of year when the Blue Winged Olive hatch should be on.  I spent Sunday seeking the hatch but did not find it.  I drove around to Six Mile Gap on the Upper North Platte and discovered it was too muddy to fish.  Maybe not too muddy, but muddier that I wanted to deal with.  Lesson learned: check the N. Platte at the State Line Ranch bridge before driving another 12 miles north to six mile gap.  The  muddy run off was from a snow storm that had hit the N. Platte River Valley but did not leave us a drop of snow on the other side of the Snowy Range.  I drove back to fish the Laramie River not far from my home.  The ice is off but the water is clear and low. These are not the easiest conditions for fishing there.  The Laramie is a wild brown trout fishery and can offer fantastic fishing - but just as often, for me anyway, it can be a bust.  In fact, I can not think of another river that has fished as inconsistently for me as the Laramie.

The day was cool and intermittently overcast with fast scudding clouds which occasionally dropped a mixture of rain and sleet and sometimes a rush of snow which was gone in another minute. Textbook conditions for a Spring Baetis hatch.  The Blue Winged Olives are the first mayflies to hatch in the season.  They are magnificent little mayflies with bluish gray wings and olive/brown bodies.  Unfortunately, the hatch was not to be.

I did have a good afternoon.  I caught six (or seven?) beautiful wild brown trout in a bit more than three hours. The largest (shown above) was just under 18" but the fish were more commonly around 14".  All but two of the fish took a WD40 tied on a size 18 DaiRiki #135 hook.  I've been tying the WD40 with a wood duck tail and a body of 70 denier olive/brown UTC thread. Compared to the old standard Uni-thread the UTC thread colors are both nuanced and rich. The thorax is dubbed with SLF Spikey Dubbing in the Natural Fox color.  The wing case is black Holo Tinsel.  The distinctive thing about the WD40 is the oversize "globular" thorax.   Of the two fish that did not take the WD40, one fancied a skinny orange rock worm and another took a gold bead caddis.  I have to say that every time I brought one in on the WD40 I was surprised to see the fish had not taken the more colorful fly of the pair.  The BWO's may not have been hatching but the fish seem keyed into a good imitation of the BWO nymph/emerger.  That has me thinking the hatch is on, I just missed it.