Dream Hatch
By Neil M. Travis, Montana/Arizona
Pale Morning Duns, the name just trips off your tongue as
pure poetry, and conjures up memories of bright summer
days with rising trout gorging themselves on this most
wonderful hatch. If God set out to create a perfect mayfly
hatch the Pale Morning Dun had to be His pièce de résistance.
For the scientific minded these mayflies are in the family
Ephemerellidae, genus Ephemerella, and comprise four
species: inermis, infrequens, lacustris, and mollita. Of these
four species inermis and infrequens are the most prolific,
and the most likely species the angler will encounter. In
the western United States, next to the prolific hatches of
Baetis, Pale Morning Duns are the most important hatch
of mayflies on most of the famous trout waters. From May
until October PMD's are hatching somewhere from California
to Alaska.
PMD's are the perfect hatch. The most prolific Baetis hatches
occur when the weather is the worst, and Tricorythodes tend to
reach their greatest hatching density about sunrise when most
anglers are still snug in bed. PMD's hatch in mid-morning, unless
the daytime temperatures reach the scorching range, which is a
far more respectable time to hatch. They generally prefer bright
sunny days, and on partly cloudy days they will often hatch most
of the day. The spinners fall during the early evening, and if the
weather is very hot they will fall during the morning hours. What
a convenient arrangement.
Unfortunately, as wonderful as PMD's are, catching trout when
they are hatching may prove to be the ultimate test of the angler's
temper. The difficulty does not lie with the PMD's, but with the
selectivity of the trout that are feeding upon them.
PMD nymphs are classified as crawlers and rarely venture from
the stream bottom before hatching unless they are dislodged. They
live in areas of fine gravel and in dense weed beds where they feed
on decaying vegetation and algae. Based upon what they are
consuming the nymphs tend to be a variety of colors ranging from
various shades of olive, reddish brown to nearly black, and within
a given area you may find nymphs of several different colors. This
variation of colors dictates that the successful angler should have
several different colors of nymphs to match the naturals. This is
especially important later in the season after the trout have been
feeding on the naturals for an extended period of time. Trust me
when I say that individual trout can become very, very selective
when feeding on this hatch.
The nymphs begin to make casual forays off the bottom an hour
or more before the beginning of the hatch. In clear water the
observant angler will often observe the trout feeding on the
nymphs, and a suitable nymph fished just off the bottom is a
very productive method during this time. The key to success
is getting the nymph down to the level where the fish are feeding,
and offering them the proper color. During this period the fish
will be unlikely to move up in the water column to take a nymph
that is floating too far off the bottom so it is imperative that your
offering be presented at the right level.
When the PMD's begin to hatch they normally do so quickly,
and unless the air temperature is cool or rainy they normally
do not linger long on the surface. This means that the trout tend
to feed less on the hatching duns and more on the nymphs and
emergers. As Shakespeare's Hamlet said, 'Ay, there's the rub.'
Early in the season when PMD's first appear it may be relatively
easy to take fish using a dry fly, especially when the number of
hatching flies is low, but as the season progresses and the number
of hatching insects increase, the trout tend to become more and
more discerning. In addition, since the duns leave the water fairly
quickly the trout key less and less on the duns and more and more
on emergers and cripples. This is where the observant angler who
knows what to look for as he observes trout feeding will likely be
the angler who has the greatest success in connecting with the
feeding fish.
One beautiful Montana summer day I was fishing my favorite
local spring creek during a heavy hatch of PMD's. The flies
had been hatching for a couple weeks, and all the trout had a
PHD in insect identification by this date. I was fishing in the
tail-out of a short riffle where the trout were stacked up feeding
on the emergers. Although the flies were hatching very heavily
I did not observe one fish feeding on the duns, but the water
was literally boiling with feeding fish.
Another angler was just downstream from my position and although
I was consistently hooking fish he did not seem to be having any
success. After losing a fly on a particularly good fish I sat down
on the bank to rework my tippet and to attach another fly. As I
observed the other angler it quickly became obvious why he was
not catching any fish. He was fishing a dun. Time after time he
placed picture perfect casts over several feeding trout without a
single response. I finished tinkering with my tackle and when I
looked up he was gone, and the trout he had been fishing to were
continuing to gorge themselves. While it appeared to the casual
observer that the trout were feeding on the duns a more careful
observation would have shown that the risers were feeding right
in or just below the surface film, capturing the emerging flies before
they could split the surface film and fly away.
As the season progresses PMD's tend to get smaller. Early in the
season the hatching duns, which are normally E. infrequens, are a
true size 16, but later in the hatch cycle a size 18 or even 20 better
imitate most of the nymphs and duns.
I greatly love the PMD spinner falls. The imitations are easy to tie
consisting of nothing more that a tail, a dubbed body, and hackle
spun over the thorax and clipped off top and bottom. Some of my
most favorite memories are based on fishing this simple fly to rising
trout in the twilight hours of a Montana summers evening.
I have barely scratched the surface in describing the outstanding
fishing opportunities that the PMD hatch offers to the dedicated
angler. To be successful you need a box full of flies, especially
nymphs and emergers, tied in a variety of styles and colors, but
a more delightful hatch of flies is hard to imagine, and I'm certain
that the trout feel the same way. ~ Neil M. Travis, Montana/Arizona
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