Quote Originally Posted by ScottP View Post
...next summer when I'm in Yellowstone country, I most definitely won't leave home without them....
... takes place over a relatively short time ( mid-July, at the earliest, and usually starting in August through the end of August or shortly thereafter ) in a limited number of places.

For those of us who fish the West year round, every month of the year, in a variety of locations, Spruce Moth patterns would be excess baggage most of the time, and quite possibly all the time. For example, fishing 125-135 days a year in Montana and Idaho, I've never tied, left home with, and fished a Spruce Moth pattern.

Not saying that Spruce Moths don't make for an interesting fly angling experience in places where they are available to trout, and not saying that Doug's pattern and your flies aren't really good examples of flies that will fish well in those places for a short time in the summer - just saying that hyping it to be a year around fly for the entire West is a bit much.


John

P.S. There was an article recently in one of the fly fishing magazines on the subject of spruce moths. By a well known angler from Ennis MT. It is a good article and well worth reading. I know from the local people that Rock Creek and the Blackfoot and the West Fork of the Bitterroot are properly included in a list of places to fish the spruce moth hatch.

However, I found it interesting that the author included the Lochsa as one of the places where spruce moths make for a fishable hatch. I fished that river 20 to 30 days this summer during the period he says there would be a spruce moth hatch there - and have never seen a single spruce moth. ( Maybe I missed them ?? ) That makes me wonder how many of the other rivers listed actually have the hatch. But I guess the longer the list of rivers, the more believable the hype.