You cast and cast and cast to the rising trout and nothing happens, it is as if the fish eat everything in sight except your fly. Part of the problem might be the fly you are using is not in sync with the stage of the hatch in process.




Every hatch is a series of stages. Starting with rising nymphs, what are referred to as emerges or pupa. This stage is often the easiest prey a trout will get. Tell-tale signs are trout ‘porposing’ the bugs, you see the dorsal fins and tail of the feeding trout. Despite the fact there might be adults or duns on the water, the trout are focusing on emergers. There is a steady increase of emerger patterns appearing in fly catalogs as this stage is becoming a favorite of fly fishers.



If you begin to see trout’s heads poking out of the water thee has been a subtle shift in the hatch, as trout are feeding on insects in the surface film. This is the proper time to try a dry or use a tandem rig with a short tippet and an emerger trailing the dry. As more and more strikes come on your dry fly, simply clip off the emerger. Rotation of your dry fly pattern seems to be effective as your strikes slow down. If you had been fishing a standard dry fly try a parachute patterns, sparkle dun, or some other alternative.

Other considerations, of course are your presentation, body positions, tippet and fly size. Your presentation needs to be delicate; the fly needs to float in the same direction, speed and manner of the naturals. Sometimes positioning yourself in the proper location is all you need to do. Upstream, downstream, across stream, these are calls that need to be made after consideration of currents, distance, and your own personal safety.



The tippet needs to be as delicate as possible small hatches in crystal clear water demand at least a 6x, but may require all the way down to 8x. Fly selection needs to be as close to the natural as possible, then go smaller as the fish wariness increases.



The final strategy to be considered here is a counter intuitive method of throwing all the rules out the window and casting something totally unrelated to the hatch. This seems to work only in a long frenetic hatch or spinner fall when the fish are fat and seemingly intent of getting fatter. For some reason there are times when throwing them something unrelated attracts their attention. Likely choices must be something the fish see like a terrestrial pattern or an attractor pattern like a Royal Wulff or your favorite Humpy.