Spent a couple days on a tailwater in MT. Most hatches, caddis, PMD were pretty much non-factors but the tricos were doing there thing in massive numbers; however, the fish (of which there were many) didn’t seem interested at all. Fished a few runs where I had seen very heavy feeding last July, but except for the odd, splashy rise to something else (beetle?, ant?, unknown?) the fish ignored the hatch and spinner-fall. It’s been a hot, dry summer out here and flows are down (temps still seemed reasonable), but the protein is still on the table and the fish don’t have to expend any more energy than they did before. I’ve seen trout ignore spruce moth falls and salmonflies because they’re stuffed to the gills with them; do the get tired of day-after-day of these little bugs?
Tricos, not my cup of tea. It is getting really hard to see the fly once it gets out there a little ways. I use two different tactics when the fish are doing what you stated. Either I put on a big hopper with a bead head dropper (say a PT or Brassie or Copper John or Hare’s Ear or Prince Nymph, etc) or I just plain nymph with a couple bead head flies below a strike indicator. If that doesn’t work, then I enjoy the scenery and keep casting for the occasional hungry or irritated trout.
But, the main thing is, you were out on the water.
Scott, I’ve seen many times when the fish seem so gorged on the hatch dujour that they ignored even naturals floating by. Once, while fishing the upper Teton River just west of Driggs, ID, I experienced a massive caddis emergence. The caddis were so thick that every breath was dangerous. Fish were rising all around so I naturally put on my best imitation of the caddis in the air and on the water. an hour later, not even a look and a refusal. I looked closer and realized there was also a massive PMD spinner fall occurring, although how they could make it to the water in the midst of all those caddis is beyond me. There were both female (olive) PMD spinners in size 16 as well as male (rusty) PMD spinners in size 18 on the water. I found the fish preferred the size 18 rusty spinners - the smallest offering on the water at the time. I had a blast touching at least 3 dozen fish before it became too dark to see. I assume the resident trout were gorged on the caddis pupae, because the only fish I caught were whitefish on the surface! Not one trout in the bunch.
It was a blast, but very confusing at the time.
I have seen the trico spinners fall en masse on the Box Canyon of the Henry’s Fork in the early morning hours without a fish rising to pay them any interest. I’ve also been on Utah’s Green River when the cicadas are dropping on the water only to watch a finicky brown come to the surface to a floundering bug and do a complete 360-degree inspection of the natural and then refuse and slowly make its way back down to the depths.
Who knows what goes on in that pea-sized brain, but whatever it is, it keeps us all going back for more.
Trico’s are a super hatch and can be really frustrating. Fish can be all over the place, rising/feeding and your fly just floats along. It’s part of what keeps us coming back 'cause sometimes things all come together…
If (when) you reach that point, try tossing an ant at them sometime and see what happens…grins Now try it subsurface…more grins…
Spotting a Trico Hatch, took me a long time to, finally see…
Get up early as the sun is just coming up and get to the stream and watch the water surface, as the sun gets higher there are all these small circles on the mirror water surface… that is the spot were a Trico was sucked down by a fish…
That is how you spot a Trico Hatch, the males are waiting all night on the water surface wait for the females to show up…
I’ve seen this with caddis hatches – blizzard hatch, fish feed like crazy for a couple hours, and then quit even though there are still many bugs on the water.
I haven’t ever seen it with tricos. Although, my impression is that you need really good numbers of tricos on the water to get fishing rising well. If the tricos aren’t’ very thick, the fish never really get started except for a few scattered smaller fish.
I’ve seen that a number of times on the Madison; they’re going crazy for the caddis emergence then switch gears and start on the epeorus (pink lady) hatch. The CDC & Elks and Clackas which had been magic just a few minutes before were ignored and they only wanted the mayfly. Riseforms were a bit different but it took me a good 20 minutes to figure out things had changed; it was also pretty dark by that time and I had trouble spotting the duns coming down the feeding lanes.
They were thick, very thick, but the trout ignored them. I’m thinking they may have been feeding on sunken spinners since I could see a number of trout feeding subsurface (or they could have been feeding on the multitude of other stuff coming down the pipeline - sowbugs, midge pupa, nymphs, etc).