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January 18,
2003 Lower Stanislaus Time: 7:00 – 4:00pm Weather: Cloudy/Foggy and cold Set Up: 9’ Sage LL 5wt. Fished
with Cortland deep nymphing level line. 4ft Braided leader with ~3ft 5x
Florocarbon to first fly, 12” of 6x to second. Narrative: This was the big fly experiment weekend. I
had tied up several different colors of Czech nymph and an experimental midge
pattern. I took stomach samples at 3 stations and seined 3 samples. They are as
follows: The rock pile (1), Brian’s Hole (2) the lower riffle above the
shoot (3). My findings were as follows: At station 1 I fished the v-worm, Czech
nymph, thread midge and the “new midge” which I guess I’ll refer to as a
transparent yarn midge or “trans” midge for short. Fishing in this section was good, I fished
for 2.5 hrs and landed 6 fish out of 15. Analysis here is difficult because of
my poor landing ratio. All fish landed were on the worm or were foul hooked.
This tells me that I was hooking fish for the most part on the point fly,
however, stomach samples showed that the fish here were heavily taking midge
larva and pupa. I feel sure that fish were taking my thread midge (because they
always do here) but I wasn’t sensing it. I fished the deep nymphing line again just
to determine if it has any other uses than deep short line nymphing as advocated
by Joe Humphrys. What I’ve found is that it excels as a nymphing line in heavy
fast water. The slim profile does not catch water like a traditional fly line.
Used with an indicator, I’m sure this would be a killer combination at a
distance. The line does have very many disadvantages due to the fact that you
can not really “cast” the line or roll cast it. Use of the line however is
proving a fun and effective challenge. Water temps were 46 degrees and I fished
mostly from “the rock”. At about 7:30am I began to see the fish visibly high
in the water column. I can only presume that the midge hatch had started or that
the midges had started to exhibit something like behavior drift in preparation
for hatching. At 8:30 or so, the air temperatures became noticeably warmer.
(Thank goodness.) A few fish started rising sporadically after that. Stomach samples showed the fish taking
midge larva and pupa. Exact identification is difficult, most entomology books
treat midges as the red headed step child. The papa look very much like the
“black fly” in Don Holbrook’s Midge Magic. These flies are chunky like
small house flies, rather than a mosquito type midge. A seine sample in
the fast water at the rock pile showed the same bugs, in the same proportion of
larva and pupa. Interestingly, the larva are size 14-18 and not the 20 that I
normally fish. The pupa are size 22. The pupa seem to break from their holding
stations in clumps, a very effective fly could be developed if these clumps
could be imitated. My thread midge after it’s been roughed up a bit tended to
look like the pupa. Joel showed up at about 9:30, just as I was
starting to move. Joel fished for an hour or so while I took pictures, made
notes and fooled around. Joel picked up one or more fish at the Dam using the
v-worm. At about 10:30 we moved down to Brian’s
spot. There was a fellow working the midge hatch below we stayed above. Joel
fished the fast water at the top and managed to pick up fish on an a midge
pattern, it was either an olive RS2 or WD40. I watched until I saw a fish break
the surface just below him. Earlier I had experimented with a black magic and
being lazy, I decided to toss this wet fly down to the fish. The fish took on
the second cast, much to my delight and amusement. I sampled this fish again
found midge larva, pupa and adults. This fish was definitely taking emerging
midge. A seine sample again showed mostly midge
pupa and larva. There were also small olive and olive tan scuds (size 20) and a
single cased caddis- size 16 with cream body. The ratio was something like
30/2/1. I consider this spot to be one of the
hardest on the river and was quite pleased when, after switching to my new trans
midge pattern, I hooked 5 fish in close succession. After it’s debut up stream
and the sample I had done, I felt sure that this fly wasn’t olive enough and
was perhaps a size too small. Now I’m not too sure. I’ll have to tie a bunch
from 16-20. We fished here for about 2hrs and climbed
our way out. The plan now was to try my new Czech nymph
patterns on the pools above the shoot. This section was crowded and there were
fishers were I planned to test my nymphs. I waited until they were leaving and
made my way over. I spoke with one angler as he was preparing to leave. A fish
moved up and started feeding, close to the bank. I dropped my nymph in and
hooked a fish. It wasn’t the fish I’d seen. It was another fish near by. I
showed the fellow my Czech nymph and made my way across the run. He showed me a
similar fly he had been using that didn’t work. Again, the nymphs
appeared to be correct. I hooked -10 fish on the Czech nymph and one on a zebra
midge. A stomach sample showed that these fish
preferred midge; however, as seen in my last stream sample, this area is
possibly about 60% midge, 30% caddis and 10% mayflies and other bugs. I need to
do more sample to know for sure. Presumably the fish are used to seeing caddis
and can’t resist the caloric windfall that these size 12 insects represent as
compared to a size 20 midge. A stream sample just above the “shoot”
revealed a cream colored cased caddis that I have yet to identify. It could be a
species of Grannom, Lepidostomatidea. Joel had fished the shot and he and another
fellow had hooked into some large (17-20 inch fish). That fellow was fishing a
serendipity type fly tied much like the Krystal Flash on hook in size 16. His
fly could easily be mistaken for the cream colored caddis, without its case. It
could also pass for a Glossosoma (Turtle Case Caddis) that I believe are also
present. I fish again next week but this time I
think I will try to cover more water and take more samples. I didn’t get a
chance to fish the beatis fly I tied. Maybe next week.
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