A JULY DAY ON THE SPRING CREEKS OF PARADISE VALLEY (Part 3)
| Sysadmin Note |
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| Part three of a series Click here for Part 2 |
I would like to start out by saying that many angler come to the spring creeks with preconceived ideas and by doing so they limit their ability for success. If given an opportunity, I love to match wits with the trout during a hatch. However, there are situations and weather conditions that sometimes conspire to destroy the normal fishing that we expect to enjoy on the creeks.
When that happens we can either sit around, complaining and fishless or adapt to the situation and enjoy some success.
At first I am going run through a typical day on the creeks in July, later, I will cover a couple of the special situations that you might encounter. I can’t cover all of them as this is supposed to be a booklet and not a full blown book.
Dawn’s early light happens around 5AM in July. Now you can come out this early, and if you desire to do so, I would pay the day before! Arriving at 5AM, you may encounter some Midge action or nothing at all, except having the creek all to yourself until around 8 to 8:30 AM when the other anglers will begin to arrive. If I was going to arrive this early and found no midging activity I would begin fishing with a mouse or a streamer imitation, covering the water rather quickly, hoping to pick up a rather large and aggressive trout.
The ideal day may begin rather early for some anglers, however, for those who willing to venture out early, they can be rewarded, and find excellent fishing: Therefore, I have selected a semi-reasonable time to begin the day.
7AM: Often I will find trout either feeding on Midges or on some warm mornings or even spinners. Normally, during these early morning hours the spinners will be little Rusty Spinners, size 20 or 22. You may also encounter what we refer to as the Mystery Spinner, which is an 18 or 20. This spinner is not yet keyed out, but possibly it is Paralep. Anyways, it has two tails and a black tip on the abdomen and clear white abdomen, with clear wings and a black thorax. However, the first things that I do are gear up and choose the section of the creek that I wish to fish. Then, I observe!
If I see no surface action then I might pause for another cup of coffee. Just kidding, I would rig up two nymphs and proceed to cover the water. My choice of nymphs would be a midge worm and midge pupa.
However, if I were observed surface action, then I would, plan an approach to the working fish. Upon entering the water, I would pause to study the surface of the water, to able to see exactly what the trout were feeding on. Sometimes in the early morning the rises are spaced out and infrequent, sometimes this is because there are only a few insects on the water. However, often a few trout will key on these insects. Therefore, my choice of imitations would be a size 20 Rusty Spinner and a size 18 or 20 Black Midge Pupa fished on a dropper 20 inches behind the dry. (The length of the dropper can be shorten if you feel the trout are feeding higher in the water column.) Normally I have the stream to myself until 8 and 8:30 AM.
8:30 AM By this time on a normal warm July morning you might begin to see PMD Spinners mixed with the Rusty Spinners and the Mystery Spinners dancing over the streamside vegetation. If so, try a Parachute PMD Spinner or a Harrop PMD Spinner (or your own favorite PMD Spinner in size 16 or 18.) Remember, don’t flock shoot, pick a trout and feed the trout. Another note, you don’t get extra style points for the long cast, move as close as possible to the trout before presenting your imitation. The closer you are the better chance you have of reacting to the take in timely manner and hooking the intended target. The length of morning spinner fall can vary, and I have experienced short spinner falls that last only thirty minutes or so, and others which have lasted for an hour and a half.
During those early morning hours I would be using a 9’ leader, starting out with 5X tippet, and a 6X dropper. If the fish were feeding on very flat water I use 6X for both the tippet and the dropper.
Somewhere between 9:30 and 10:30 AM, if I was not already below a riffle, I would then change my location. Then I would change to pair of nymphs fished about twelve inches apart, and I would place the strike indicator about three and half feet from the first fly.
Often you can see the trout starting to flash, or you can see them move taking something just off the bottom. At this time of the day that generally means that they are taking PMD nymphs coming off the bottom to begin their rise to the surface. Besides the PMD nymphs the trout may also be feeding on emerging Black & Olive Caddis Pupa. That is especially true if you are fishing in or just below a riffle section. Once I start nymphing I will keep close watch on where the trout are feeding the water column. As the trout move up in the water column I will move the indicator closer to the nymphs.
A word about strike indicators, I really do not care which brand you may favor. However, try to keep the indicator small, so it floats to the surface of the water like a feather, rather than dropping in like a rock. The rock type (large and/or hard) indicators can spook the trout.
A special note on covering the water: If you are prospecting and see no rising or moving fish, you may move along at a reason pace, the idea being that the more water you cover the more trout you may catch. However, when you have feeding trout, regardless of whether they are taking nymphs, emergers or duns move slowly. These spring creek have a large population of trout and moving too quickly will cause you to spook more and catch less, thus becoming more frustrated. During a heavy emergence I will often fish on section of water where I move no more than 50 to 100 feet of where I started in a time span of two or three hours.
Spooking Trout: It is going to happen, deal with it. However not all is lost. Yes, all of the trout in the Paradise Valley Spring Creeks are wild. However, like all wild creatures, they have learned to adapt. In the books, articles and stories of a by-gone time we have all heard about the spooked trout that went down and never returned until five or six hours later. Today’s wild trout on the spring creek have adapted and changed, yes a bad approach, a cast and the like will put them down, but it is unlikely that they will stay down for long. 90% of time, within 10 to 15 minutes or less they will resume their position and return to feeding. Even though, the Paradise Valley spring creek owners limit the number of anglers per day on the creeks, it the trout allowed bad approaches, wading practices and bad casting to stop them from feeding they would starve to death. In other-words, they have become tolerant of anglers, often you will make a bad cast or not get a drag free drift and the trout don’t spook, they just ignore you. This is somewhat frustrating. Here I would like offer a word of caution, the spring creek trout do not like to be stepped on and if you hook a trout with a footprint on it, you will have one; wild upset fish on your hands.
Oh, by the way, some of these fish will even score your casting and presentation methods, by holding up little signs, that say,
“Bad Cast”, “Short”, “Your Dragging” or what fly is that”. Yes, some of these trout are very educated!
10:30 AM to 2:00 PM: During this time period you will be well into the hatch. Now, I am going to urge you to be very observant. I am still nymphing and I will continue to move the indicator toward the nymphs, bringing them higher into the water column. When I see the trout rise forms begin to bulge and break the surface of the water, then I will switch patterns and discard my strike indicator.
One of the mistakes that I see all of the time is that when anglers first see the trout begin to feed and if there is a ring ANYWHERE IN SIGHT, off come the nymphs and dry flies or surface emergers are tied on. Oh, they may take a fish or two, but the bulk of the trout will still be taking nymphs. Many studies have shown that the trout’s diet is made of 85% of subsurface food forms. The trout will eat what is most abundant and easiest to capture. On normal warm days in July the PMD nymphs reach the surface and explode off the surface of the water rather quickly, and making them much more difficult for the trout to capture. The proper way to rig for this situation is to use a surface emerger and/or dry adult PMD imitation and a PMD nymph, fished behind the dry on a dropper. The dropper length should start out around twenty inches in length, as the rise forms, gets closer to the surface, the dropper may be shortened.
During cool or damp days the duns then may ride on the surface for a long distance. When this situation is encountered, then the dry adult imitation is called for and the fishing we all enjoy is at hand.
Here are a couple of more bits of information pertaining to the PMD hatch. If you encounter a fairly heavy hatch or a hatch during a day with light winds, try using a spinner or spent winged adult dun imitation. Also during a heavy emergence a floating nymph behind a dry fly is a good choice.
Remember, just because you see rings on the surface, does not mean that the trout are eating dry flies. In this situation, the trout still may be eating emerging nymphs, just in or under the surface film. There is only one way to determine if a trout is eating adults on the surface, and that is see the adult dun mayfly and see the trout eat it. Switching to a dry fly because you are seeing rings, or even when you see the trout’s head, made lead to a couple of trout and who lot of frustration.
For those of you who wish to challenge, yourself, I suggest trying some fairly flat water and sight nymphing with a single nymph. Oh, did I mention that when you are sight nymphing, you do not use an indicator. You place the nymph above the trout, based on the current speed and watch the trout, if it turns or moves and eats, lift and tighten into the fish.
As the hatch begins to fade, you will find more trout willing to eat surface imitations like Para-duns, Para-spinners, Sparkle and/or Compara duns.
During a normal July day the hatch will begin to fade and taper off around 1:30 PM or so, then I break for a nice long relaxing lunch.
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| Part four can be found here. |