This past weekend I happened by the Missouri River below Holter Dam near Wolf Creek MT. Not being a morning angler, I’ve not had the “trico” experience. While exploring the Missouri, I ended up with some uninvited guests in the truck. Which gave me the opportunity to photograph a couple trico models - as in a male spinner and a female dun.
This pic gives some sense of scale to the size of these little bugs, although I didn’t think to include a dime or such for better reference.
Some detail for a male spinner…
… and for a female dun.
The following two pix are cropped and enlarged from the first pic above. The female is really chunky - as in ready to do the molting and mating thing.
I’m not big on big river tailwater fishing and definitely not big on early morning fishing, but a couple of the brown trouts I saw cruising a back eddy and a couple of the fishies I saw slurping tricos in that eddy got me thinking about coming up with a couple patterns to have in my box just in case …:roll:
Great timing on that John. I am going to tie up some tricos for Montana and wondered if they had the light body or the all black body. Now I know. thanks
The males have a dark body and the females have a fairly light olive body ( abdomen ), and the females are somewhat larger. I found a couple good articles on tricos on www.westfly.com. Well worth reading before you go to the tying desk.
That’s a great silhouette shot of the the male on the window. I really shows how much the body of the flying insect resembles the nymph prior to hatching. Hatches are something that do not happen with much frequency or to near the endurance they do in your neck of the wood.
thanks for the pics John and thanks for the advice on how to fish them Jeremy! I got them tied up this weekend and, with any luck, will be using them soon.
