Welcome to the new season; Blue Wings and Midges

The 2008 season is finally swinging into gear. I have put a number of trips on the water in this last week all with fairly productive days. 

The mornings have been fairly slow with a lot of midges on the water, the fish will rise on occasion but the most productive days will be had nymphing. I have been using a deep nymph rig set at anywhere from 6' to 7.5' to the first fly. I have had the most production from using two bead head flies with 2 to 3 split shots above. The most useful flies have been zebra midges in brown, black, and red; sz. 18. But yesterday I found a small gray rs2 worked very well (sz. 20-22).

In the afternoons, we have been seeing a fairly pronounced baetis (Blue Wing Olive) hatch that has brought large amounts of fish to the surface for fairly productive dry fly fishing. The patterns that I have been using the most regularly have been hackle stackers and different variants of cripple patterns. As with most fishing on the Green the fish are more drift selective than pattern selective. I have been fishing with different dun patterns of Blue Wings, trailed by a small hackle stacker or a small cripple. 

Morning dry fly action has been happening for some of the guides up here by fishing really slow back water with some sz. 18-20 highly visible midge pattern followed up by a sz. 24-26 no see um bug. This seems to work well when targeting the so called scummer trout that rises regularly, because these fish have a long amount of time to inspect the proffered bug and likely have seen a little of everything that every passer by could offer. 

There is good news however for the Terre

strial lover. I have fished dry dropper with a large para cricket and have seen a few good eats on the larger dry. Some guides that I have talked to are fishing dry dropper with cicada patterns and are seeing a few eats on the Cicada. I have heard reports of seeing a Cicada on the water.  So this is really good news. Meaning we might not be too far away from the beginning of big bug season on the Green.

Good luck out there, I'll see you soon.