Fall has arrived in Cody Country.
While we have yet to see frost on windshields in the mornings and daytime temperatures dropping to the place where wearing a light jacket or sweater until noon is the norm, we are seeing major drops in water temperatures throughout the mountain areas and also at the lower elevations.
My last column dealt with the benefits to trout when temperatures in lakes dropped from the high 70s to a more comfortable 58-62 degrees.
The insect hatches anglers can expect to see on rivers and streams throughout the Big Horn Basin drainages and Yellowstone National Park have already begun. Gray drakes and blue wing olive mayflies are emerging mid-morning to mid-afternoon now. The larger fall caddis flies that are a dusky orange color are also flying about. These insects hatch in abundance and provide an enormous amount of protein for trout, whitefish and char at a time when the trout know that a long, insect deprived winter is about to occur.
Gray drakes are a large mayfly. The color is, obviously, light gray to dark dun. The color depends on the specie and genus of these insects, but anglers can expect to enjoy many hours of dry fly fishing using old standards like the parachute Adams, gray drake Wulff, royal Wulff and the H&L Variant.
For fussier trout like those on the upper Yellowstone River near LeHardy Rapids, or those found in the Lamar River and Slough Creek in Yellowstone National Park, and some of the newer patterns like the down wing gray drake or extended body tilt wing grey drake give a more lifelike look to the flies, thereby enticing a take by sophisticated cutthroat, rainbow or brown trout. The best sizes are 10 and 12 when these mayflies are on the water.
Anglers can also use soft hackled flies that imitate drowned or spent gray drakes that never made it to the emergent stage of the insect’s lifespan. One of my favorite wet flies the past few years that I fish September through October (yes, the gray drake hatch goes that long) has been Blooms Optic Nerve in sizes 10-14. This wet fly has a gray partridge feather wound at the head that, when wet, gives the exact appearance of an easy-to-eat gray drake that cannot rise to the surface of the water.
The Optic Nerve has a tungsten bead at the head that facilitates a quick descent into the deeper waters where there are often larger trout looking for an easy meal. Fly fishers have the option of fishing this pattern dead drift, or by letting the fly swing from the bottom to the surface. This technique is generally applied when fishing wet flies during a caddis emergence, but it is just as effective when gray drake hatches are heavy, or if the angler wants to use a good searching pattern where gray drake activity has occurred but the angler was either too early, or too late to have dry fly action.
Blue wing olives are very small compared to the gray drake. These insects are generally size 16-18 this time of year, but they have a relative called the Pseudocloeon that can be as small as size 22-26. Thankfully, the trout are not too picky when it comes to feeding on blue wing olives this time of year. A well presented dry fly olive parachute, compara-dun or sparkle dun in size 18 will usually result in a bend in one’s fly rod.
It is best to fish puddle casts or reach casts that allow the angler to let the current take the fly to the trout than it is to cast upstream and over the trout. There are YouTube videos on these two casts and volumes of books that have been written extolling their virtues Even though a size 18 fly doesn’t look like much to the angler, a fly line and leader splashing down over feeding trout is the best way not to catch one. It is advisable to learn both when blue wing olives are on the water or when flows are low like this fall and the trout are super-sensitive to line, bad casts and movement.
Fall caddis are size 6-14. They seem to be larger in lakes and smaller on rivers and streams in northwest Wyoming, Yellowstone and southwest Montana. Activity can be during the midday hours on cloudy days, but the heaviest hatches and general insect activity are typically seen as the sun sets and the light dims. I recommend using orange elk hair caddis or orange stimulators for dry flies. Both do a reasonable job imitating the late summer and early fall caddis activity.
Anglers can present drag free options to the trout, or they can skitter the fly across the surface to entice a strike by fish. The latter method works well on rainbow and steelhead, a bigger version of rainbow trout. As mentioned earlier with gray drakes, soft hackles work well during caddis hatches when cast so the angler can use the current to give the fly action as it moves the fly from the bottom to the surface. Partridge and orange soft hackles in the appropriate sizes that match the caddis seen on the water one is fishing can be fished any time, of course, but the pattern is highly recommended later in the day since caddis not only rise from the bottom to emerge, but they also swim to the bottom as adults to lay their eggs.
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