Last Weekend Update (albeit a little late)

This past weekend saw some interesting if not difficult fishing. With the bright sunny weather, hatches did not materialize to the extent I had hoped. I fished well into the evening but the sporadic action of the afternoon actually slowed down as the sun sank to the horizon.

Early afternoon on a small crystal clear brown trout stream resulted in a few spooked fish and no hook-ups. Bug activity was almost non-existent; I did see a few winter stoneflies lingering along the banks (female Zapada cinctipes waiting to drop the last of their eggs) but no fish rising.

Zapada cinctipes (adult female)

I moved lower in the watershed where the water was just a little on the murky side. Here the occasional fish could be seen slashing at Corixids as they landed on the water and tried to penetrate the surface tension. I worked a backswimmer pattern with a foam back just under the surface and managed to connect with a few good fish.

Around 5:00 a slow hatch of dusky gray BWO’s started to trickle off. Rising fish were few and far between, and those that were rising were doing so sporadically. After a couple of refusals to my usual BWO emerger pattern I managed to hook a few fish on a gray version. I was hoping the hatch would pick up as the evening progressed but things went flat.