Blue Winged Olives on the Green

A Rainbow that took a Blackback WD.

The springtime Blue Winged Olive (BWO) hatch on the Green River in Utah below Flaming Gorge Dam can be epic. It takes place in March-April and provides some of the best dry fly fishing in the Rocky Mountain west.    After years of trying to catch the hatch - I finally did on  Easter weekend April 19th and 20th.  Brad could not go, Carlos could not go, Jeff could not go, nor could Mike go; so I went alone.  Glad I did.

The thing about BWO's is that the hatch comes off if the weather gets rough.  Rain or snow and a bit of wind brings on the hatch.  A sunny day and the olives wait. I was lucky enough to get it all, rain, snow and wind. It's simply amazing to see the bugs start popping up to the surface like clockwork when the weather changes. And then the fish start rising, mostly in the back eddies and along the banks where the duns float lazily waiting for their new wings to dry.  If you watch carefully, you notice a single rise, and then a few more. Before long, you're tying on a dry fly watching pod of a dozen or more rising fish in the clear clear water.

Blue Winged Olive dun - nicely matched by a size 18 parachute dry.

On Saturday April 19th I floated the "A" section of the river.  It extends from the dam, 8 miles downstream to Little Hole.  Though I've fished the Green many times, I'd never floated it before.  The raft is a relatively new addition to my fishing arsenal and I floated it "alone" never out of sight of three to five other boats.  On Sunday I hoped to float the "B" section, but the shuttle is expensive and it adds at least an hour to the drive home so I hiked downstream from Little Hole and fished my way back up.

A nice brown 18" that took a BWO dry in shallow water - perfectly hooked in the neb.

On both days I spent the morning throwing nymphs and wets and did very well.  The water near the dam is colder and there is less BWO activity in that section.  More rainbows than browns in that upper section. I fished classic style winged wets on the dropper and a Black Back Wet Dream on the point.  The BBWD took lots of rainbows in the first couple of miles below the dam.  As I got downstream, the winged wets started taking more fish - and the takes on that fly were aggressive.  In one deep run I had a violent thumping take, and was broken off - perhaps the best  fish of the day.

On both days, by late morning, the weather kicked up and the olives started coming off which meant re-rigging to throw a dry fly.  Its been so long since I did any real dry fly fishing it's hard to relate how much fun it is, especially in the clear clear water of the Green.  What I mean by "real dry fly fishing" is fishing to a mayfly hatch, not throwing monstrous foam terrestrials or midges.  The BWO's are small, but not tiny, a solid size 18 is a good match for the hatch.  

A nice brown that took the dry fly from my raft anchored in the current.

I started fly fishing when I was a graduate student at Cornell. There is a popular bumper sticker in the area that says "Ithaca is Gorges". It's a great place to learn to fly fish with many streams flowing down into Cayuga lake. They support terrific runs of landlocked salmon, spawning browns in the fall, and rainbows in the spring. After building competency in basic skills (including a fly tying course offered through Cornell and taught by Lee Multari) I started driving south to fish the Delaware, the Beaverkill, and the Willowemoc. Hallowed waters in the history of American fly fishing.  These rivers and streams support prolific hatches, from early spring until fall, and it was there I learned the practice of fishing the dry fly.  

Walking back toward Little Hole on Sunday, the weather got bad and the hatch came off again.  I was fishing the pool at the base of a wide riffle when I noticed three or four excellent fish feeding on Baetis duns in water so shallow their backs were frequently exposed.  I tied on a dry and on the third or fourth cast was into a beautiful fish hooked perfectly in the neb.  It was getting late and so I headed back to the truck for the long drive home.  I was happy with y success and what better way to end the day.  

As I walked upstream I met two young anglers frantically fishing to a pod of fifteen or more fish greedily feeding on the surface.  The two young anglers had been there for more than an hour, unable to hook-up. They were throwing size 18 BWO dries. I gave them some advice and headed on, and as I moved further upstream I found a similar pod of fish and decided to try for them. Try as I might, I could not get them to take the dry fly that had just been so successful!  I switched flies, eventually trying every fly in my box that remotely resembled the BWO duns so obviously floating on the surface. Nothing worked.  Eventually, I tied on a size 16 parachute sulphur, a fly that was clearly not a good match.  Inexplicably, I hooked up right away.  After that fish, with a long drive ahead of me, I headed back upstream to the truck. As I walked the bank I was engulfed in a flight of spinners.  If I'd had more time I would haves tested my new theory, i.e., that the fish were taking spinners and not the duns.  The ginger hackle on the larger sulphur pattern that had proved successful was a near perfect match for the wings of a spent spinner.   A masking hatch, not the first time I've run into one, and always a revelation to realize what is really happening.

Final fish of the day that was feeding on spinners.

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.

Green River Trip

The Green River, just across the Utah border and below the Flaming Gorge dam, is reputed to have more fish per mile than any other stream in North America. I see numbers as high as 15,000 "catchable" trout per mile for the seven or eight miles of river below the dam. The average sizes are 14 - 18 inches and there are browns, rainbows and less commonly, cutthroat trout. Browns and rainbows dominate with the brown trout perhaps holding a slight majority over rainbows. Most of the fish so clearly visible from the bank are browns; rainbows are still holding in the deeper runs in this pre-spawn period.

Garrett and I fished on Thursday and Friday. It's a bit less that four hours drive from Laramie and we were on the river at 11 having left town just before 7AM. Thursday we fished the upper section just below the dam. The trail down to the river from the upper parking lot is rather spectacular here. With a flow of around 750 cfs the river is wadeable and it is just barely possible for me to cross at certain points. The photo above shows a drift boat passing by as we walked down the trail to the river. We wade fish from the bank and I have never hired a guide. For me, figuring out the fishing is what it is about.

We hooked up with small midge patterns (size 22 gray bodied RS2's and WD40's were hot) and, although we were hoping for a hatch of blue winged olives (Baetis), we saw none. As the day warmed (to maybe around 55°F) the midge hatch came on stronger and some fish started rising so I switched to a dry fly. A size 22 thread midge with a wrap of hackle, no wings or tails, gray body. I did catch one nice brown on the dry fly and hooked up with two more that I did not land on the tiny drys. The water in the Green is just crystal clear and sight fishing is the norm. In almost any good spot you may see ten or more fish lined up along the bank. To sight fish to them you move into position to avoid unnatural drag on the fly from intervening currents and to get the best drift, and cast hoping not to put the fish down. If you have the wrong fly, it will not work. All of these fish have been caught many times each and are highly selective feeders. I caught eight to ten fish all between 13" - 16" and Garrett may have caught twice as many. Garrett fished subsurface midge patterns and caught more fish than I did but I do love to watch a trout rise and take a dry. He was fishing the edges of the deeper and faster runs and hooked up with more rainbows than browns. I concentrated on slower shallower water sight fishing to mostly brown trout. Reflecting on the days fishing I realized that the Baetis hatch was more likely further downstream where the icy water had a chance to warm a bit.

We spent the night in an overpriced room at the Flaming Gorge Resort (discounted winter rates) and ate dinner at the restaurant there sharing a table with a couple of fly fishermen from California. They'd fished the Provo before coming up to the Green and ran into heavy Baetis hatches there. Frank is the flyfishing guy at the Western Sport Shop in San Rafael. It is one of the last great mom and pop outdoor stores in the country with a nice selection of rifles, shotguns, top quality fishing equipment and a really nice selection of new, used and rare sporting books.


Friday morning we drove down to Little Hole parking lot which is seven miles downstream from the dam. Later in the season, this parking lot can get full but there were only three other cars there when we arrived around 9:30 or so. We walked past fish rising in the long flats up to where there is a bit of broken water. We started hooking up on the same gray bodied RS2's and WD40's. Garrett fished that same rig all day long and I believe he must have caught more fish than anyone else on the river that day. He must have caught 30 trout the largest being about 19" or 20" and most being 14" - 16". I caught only a third as many but concentrated on fishing the dry fly. It was a warmer day with temperatures as high as 60°F, though it chilled down when the clouds blocked the sun. Being Friday, there were a lot more fisherman out on the river.

Around 2PM I saw two Blue Winged Olives hatch and the fish got very active. I believe they were taking Baetis nymphs. Garrett was fishing a deeper run below a wide riffle and was catching fish one after another, still fishing his underwater rig with a pair of grey bodied midge imitations. Fishermen walking upstream along the trail on the east bank would stop and watch him. Throughout the day we only rarely saw other fishermen into a fish so his productivity was rather astounding. I finally gave up on the drys after pricking and missing a beautiful rainbow who came up for my crippled Blue Winged Olive pattern in a perfect porpoising rise.

There's nothing like success. I switched to Garrett's rig and started hooking up right away. Missed landing two fish and then landed a nice rainbow. We were near waist deep in the middle of the river and with both of us hooking up we started to attract other fishermen to the run with us. By now it was around 4PM and a second flotilla of drift boats was coming through so it was a socially active scene. I hooked to another rainbow and after a rather extended fight, this one swam between my legs and was holding up under a shelf on a large rock. Rod in one hand and net in the other he swam up and went back between my legs again and against the submerged rock. Trying to move away from the rock I stumbled and gently rolled backwards as I netted the trout. The water temperature was around 40°F. It flowed down over the back of my waders and the icy cold water running down my legs was rather stunning. I released the trout and waded out laughing and cursing. I haven't fallen in a river while fishing for about 14 years. Last time was mid-winter while steelhead fishing on the Salmon River in upstate NY fishing with Peter McDonald. Garrett and I walked back to the truck and dry clothes which were a bit less than a mile downstream It would have been just fine, but I did manage to briefly dunk my camera which now does not work.