The most anticipated still-water hatch of the season
By John Shewey
Mid-May arrived with scattered clouds and a persistent breeze whose cool fingers lashed out across Chopaka Lake in north-central Washington, leaving seams of wind-blown flotsam along the leeward shore. Still, I held out hope for dry-fly action, knowing that even a short respite from the wind might bring a sudden surge of emerging Callibaetis mayflies.
The Callibaetis (speckled-wing dun) hatch and the promise of 20-inch rainbows gulping dry flies had stirred me to action the day before, when I’d gathered my gear, hopped in the truck, and embarked on the daylong drive to this fly angling hotspot. Apparently, Chopaka’s mayfly hatch had the same addictive effect on others, for the lake was fairly swarming with anglers from all over the state, all of them there to meet the dry-fly challenge of the West’s greatest still-water mayfly emergence.
In anticipation of the midday hatch, dozens of anglers had launched all manner of watercraft, and the lake’s rippled surface hosted a virtual flotilla. I was fast on my way to joining the party. Float tube inflated, waders hitched up, fins attached, rod rigged with a floating line. Just about that time, the wind evaporated, and the duns appeared in surprising numbers.
The trout responded, and the lake’s now-glassy surface erupted in increasingly frequent boils as 12- to 20-inch rainbows keyed on the duns and emerging nymphs. I never used my float tube that afternoon. Instead, I stood on the bank, casting to riseforms, and I hooked half a dozen fat rainbows on dry flies before the hatch finally subsided an hour or so later.
This was classic Chopaka Callibaetis action. And this pattern occurs almost daily throughout late spring and summer, not only on Chopaka, but on countless trout lakes (and spring creeks) all over the West.
Callibaetis duns are unmistakable with their characteristic mottled wings and tannish or olive-tan bodies. A size 12 or 14 pattern mimics the May and June hatches, but the subsequent emergences feature smaller bugs requiring size 16 flies. The duns hatch midday with precise timing varying with weather and location. I’ve seen 10 a.m. hatches, and I’ve seen 6 p.m. hatches. Callibaetis spinners often appear over the shoreline margins during mid- to late morning, dancing up and down in their graceful mating flights.
Sometimes the spinner falls themselves stir substantial surface feeding by trout, but the emergence is the key period for dry-fly action. The best dry-fly fishing occurs on cool days when the duns must remain on the surface for several seconds—sometimes as long as a minute or so—to dry their newly unfurled wings. Under such conditions, the trout enjoy easy pickings, and fly anglers get lots of surface targets. One effective technique is to “shoot the riseforms” by quickly placing a fly in the immediate vicinity of a rising trout. Often the fish swim off slowly after taking a natural, and your fly then becomes the next easy target. Another productive trick is to play the “cast-wait-twitch” game wherein you cast to an area where trout are rising, allow all the ripples to clear from the line and then alternate between leaving the fly motionless and stripping line just enough to twitch the fly.
If you see trout eating Callibaetis duns, many more fish are probably devouring the emergent nymphs as they swim to the surface. So a nymph fished within the upper few feet of the water column often produces savage strikes. Callibaetis nymphs are capable swimmers, so use a fairly quick, steady retrieve. A floating line and 10- to 15-foot leader allow you to swim the fly toward the surface like the naturals. Likewise, a nymph fished just inches below the surface often draws explosive grabs.
If you are familiar enough with a particular lake to predict the timing of its Callibaetis hatch, you can enjoy fast and furious nymph action in the hour or so prior to the beginning of the emergence. The nymphs get restless before the hatch, and begin to move up out of the weed beds. Trout eat them in depths down to 15 feet or so.
On Oregon’s Davis Lake, Forrest Maxwell and I once hit the prehatch nymph action just right several days running. Around 11 a.m. the first day, the trout turned off to our usual battery of leeches and attractor patterns. Luckily, we soon noticed two Callibaetis duns on the water—early pioneers of the hatch that was still an hour away. We switched to small Pheasant Tail Nymphs, and for the next hour enjoyed one of those glorious fish-every-fifth-cast scenarios. Sinking-tip and intermediate lines carried our flies to the appropriate depth of about 8 feet, where hungry trout slammed them with bad intentions.
Fly choice for imitating Callibaetis mayflies is usually simple. The Parachute Adams and Gulper Special are great dry patterns. Heavily fished waters and selective trout might require a more precise imitation, in which case the Sparkle Dun, Compara Dun, or CDC Dun all make excellent and effective choices. The spinner is easily imitated with the Callibaetis Krystal Spinner or Callibaetis Hackle Spinner, although a parachute-style dry fly suffices much of the time.
Nymph patterns tied to mimic the natural seem no more or less effective than a Pheasant Tail Nymph or even a sparsely dressed Hare’s Ear Nymph. In any case, keep the nymph patterns thin and sparse. For deep-fished patterns, you can add a little weight in the form of lead wire wrapped on or lashed to the hook shank, or simply rely on the sinking fly line to carry the fly to depth. A simple soft-hackle pattern often proves highly effective when fished within a foot or so of the surface.
Speckled-wing duns can be so profuse and so predictable that their emergence is well worth pursuing, not only for the chance to hook big still-water trout on dry flies, but also for the opportunity to do so on some of the West’s most scenic waters. On waters like Chopaka, explosive dry-fly rises compete for your attention with timbered mountain slopes and postcard perfect settings.
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