Friday, February 11, 2005
Tiny flies
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Rob Tucker stood knee-deep in the stream nearby, scanning the water intently. Most of these dots were flecks of foam. A few were little bugs.
And one was Tucker's fly, an imitation bug scarcely larger than a flea.
The question was, which one was the fake?
It was an important question, too.
When you're fishing with a dry fly in the middle of winter, strikes can be few and far between. It's not a good feeling when a fish hits your bug imitation - and promptly spits it out - while you're watching a piece of foam.
Midging, as it is often called, with tiny dry flies for trout in the middle of winter is not an easy game. Yet many fly anglers play it, putting up with the effort and frustration for the payoff that comes when a trout calmly sips in that fake fly and the fight is on.
"Watching a fish take a fly is simply exciting," said Bruce Pencek of Blacksburg, who joined Tucker this past Saturday for a day of fishing on the Smith River downstream of Philpott dam. "Midges are the best bet for surface activity in the winter."
The men both said they have had decent wintertime dry fly action on the river over the years. Just a few weeks ago Tucker was on the river as clouds of midges swarmed over the stream. The hatch prompted a feeding frenzy among the river's finicky trout, a mix of wild browns and stocked rainbows.
On the most recent trip, with the sun climbing above the shoreline trees late in the morning, Tucker and Pencek tied tiny dry flies to their leaders and waded in, casting the flies delicately toward trouty-looking runs.
A few midges and tiny mayflies and stoneflies fluttered about, and occasionally a trout would dimple the river's surface as it swallowed one of the bugs.
The trout weren't interested in the floating flies so the men eventually reluctantly tied on sub-surface nymphs. Those flies weren't much better although Tucker and Pencek each were able to hook a couple trout on them.
Decent wintertime dry fly action is usually found on only certain types of streams, notably creeks fed by springs and tailwater rivers below dams.
Wintertime insect hatches are more likely to occur on those waters because the water temperature variations are less severe than on free-flowing streams.
Instead of becoming all but dormant through the coldest winter months, both trout and the insects they eat remain relatively active.
The Jackson River tailrace near Covington is a favorite among wintertime dry fly anglers.
The small stretch of public water below the dam can produce some thick wintertime insect hatches, with the primary bugs being tiny black flies.
Last winter Tom Brown of Roanoke was on the river for such a hatch.
"The black flies were everywhere in the air," said Brown, who manages the fishing department at the Roanoke Orvis retail store. "They were horrendously tiny, a size 26 or 28."
A size 28 fly is roughly the size of a pencil lead.
Brown faced a challenge common among wintertime dry fly anglers. Should he try to match the hatch? Or should he tie on a larger fly - one he could actually see - and hope the fish would be willing to gobble the bigger bite.
He went with the bigger fly, a size 16 Adams that was closer to the size of a pencil eraser.
"I just started nailing one fish after another," Brown said.
Tucker and Pencek also said they will often opt for size 18 or 20 Adams flies even when the hatching insects are much smaller.
Some hatches are relatively easy to match.
Blue-winged olives are small mayflies - think fruit fly - that are known for hatching on cold, cloudy late-winter days.
Thick hatches of BWOs, as they're called, can trigger ferocious feeding frenzies, and lead to dry fly fishing every bit as good as what anglers will find later in the spring when big mayflies appear.
Getting a trout to eat a tiny fly is just one challenge for wintertime anglers.
A hooked trout must be played delicately and expertly. Not only can the hooks easily pull out of a fish's jaw, but those flies are usually attached to hair-thin tippet with breaking strength of just a couple of pounds.
"The appeal is the challenge and the precision required," said Tucker, a Radford resident who works in the communications office at Radford University. "You don't catch any trout by luck; you catch a trout on the surface in winter by doing a series of things well."
