Trico Hatch

[VTflyfishing]

As I sit at my tying bench tying up size 18 to 22 flies, I think of Tricos. I think back to the summer before last, when I was fishing with one of my less experienced buddies. We decided to get up and go fishing at sunrise, as the sun started hitting the water, fish started rising everywhere. Looking around you could see clouds of tiny flies. My buddy Shane looks at me and says 'what are they?' I said 'they are Tricos! I have a box full of them.' Quickly changing leaders we tied on some size 22 Tricos. Well about an hour or so later we weren't having any luck hooking fish over six inches. As the fish rising slowed with the sunrise Shane said 'what did we do wrong?' I said 'its like winning the lottery there is one in a million chance of winning.' The fish needs to pick out your fly out of the thousands that are in the drift. Has anyone ever had the pleasure or should I say the maddening experience fishing the Trico hatch?

[alanb_ct]

Yes, I have fished to good Trico hatches on the Farmington and the Delaware, having better success at the former. My main advice is this: use a sunken spinner. These are easy to make, just use Quick Descent dubbing for the thorax, a la John Barr.

[Beaverkill]

I find that you will have much more success if you just focus on one fish..Try and figure out his rising pattern and try and time your float so your fly will be there at the right time..This will increase those odds...

You can also try a slightly larger or different pattern..Try and stand out from the crowd...Sometimes that is all it takes...

[VTflyfishing]

beaverkill,
I did try timing my fly with one fish. I did not try a different fly, I will keep that in mind. This year the tricos did not hatch like the year before.

[wwelz]

I would say two things . 1.If you are fishing duns the females are important. They emerge very early in the am around 4:30 males emerge earlier, check the color of the duns carefully . They are not black. On the Missouri river the females emerge in a greenish color sometimes with a patch of white on the end of the thorax. Spinners are your best bet . 2. I like a downstream presentation using a reach cast with lots of slack in the line. At the end of a downstream drift make sure you do not swing or retrieve the fly over rising fish . Let the fly drift past the last rising fish before you retrieve it.

[kyle]

I love the trico hatch (on the farmington), I fish mostyl greenwoods when I fish them. But size 22 flies are WAY to big (for the farmington anyway), I tye them from #28's to #32's typically with 9 or 10X tippets. Most people will nymph or streamer fish during these hatches but I love the challenge of fishing a small fly, not to mention fighting a big fish on such light tippets. So try the farmington for tricos this year, the fish are tough but almost every fish in the river will rise to them.

-kyle

[Matt / PA]

I like the sunken spinner deal too but generally as the last rises are starting to show......usually after all the action is over is when I try to pick up a couple extra fish still finning high with a sunken spinner.

If the number of insects on the water is out competing for your fly and you need to get noticed try a double or cluster fly to get some attention. Trout are lazy and many times they'll go out of their way to suck down 2 or 3 at a shot rather than one lonely spinner.
We used this tactic quite a bit on the Bighorn and just clobbered the fish day after day. You could see big trout actually leave their lane for the double spinner. The added adavnatge was the ability to tie them on bigger hooks, 18's and even 16's. The reason we caught so many fish.........it stood out, we presented them properly and the bigger hook allowed us to actually stick just about every fish that ate them. ;D

The definition of insanity is doing something that you know is not working.......over and over and over again. Add a couple more patterns (if you're using a single pay attention to really match size), different wing materials, sunken, etc , lengthen, lighten and soften the tippet, maybe try a different leader altogether, microdrag doesn't look micro to a trout. That way next time you'll feel like you covered all the bases.
If you know what they're eating, and your covering them properly but they're still not taking that's when you need to assess.

[Kaz]

You have many good suggestions so far. As Matt says, the double trico works well. I Fish it on Spring Creek with good success. You can tie half body green/ half black/ all black, all green...not sure it really matters, but I usually go with all light olive.

Another thought is to unmatch the hatch and throw a terrestrial...you can drop the sunken trico off that or a small PTail which may / may not match the nymph but a good fish producer regardless.

I use size 26 for single tricos and 18's for double on Spring

[Matt / PA]

[quote author=Kaz link=topic=2464.msg18047#msg18047 date=1233681402]
You have many good suggestions so far. As Matt says, the double trico works well. I Fish it on Spring Creek with good success. You can tie half body green/ half black/ all black, all green...not sure it really matters, but I usually go with all light olive.

Another thought is to unmatch the hatch and throw a terrestrial...you can drop the sunken trico off that or a small PTail which may / may not match the nymph but a good fish producer regardless.

I use size 26 for single tricos and 18's for double on Spring


[/quote]

Kaz has a really good point about "unmatching the hatch" as well as really look at the water and make sure tricos are the only thing out there.
One morning on the Henry's Fork I was fishing the trico spinner fall and as usual they were sipping tricos like lazy hogs but they were also cruising as they did it like they always seem to do there which made it REALLY hard to pinpoint a fish and drift at the same time. I caught one good rainbow but spent most of the next 1/2 hr casting my arm to numbness until I stopped and watched.
That's when i noticed there were some caddis mixed in with the tricos. Hmmmmmmm.
So I watched the 2 feeding fish in front of me and sure enough EVERY SINGLE caddis that floated over them they went out of their way to eat. Some of the cruising i saw was them leaving lanes for caddis.
So feeling like a kid at Christmas I quickly switched to a bullet head flat water style caddis to match and proceeded to doink 3 big rainbows on 3 casts before the rising finally stopped. Most of the time was spent fighting fat rainbow rather than building lactic acid in my right arm.

[Flyfisher]

I have actually had luck catching a few big browns by fishing Big Streamers under this hatch. just don't weight them much. I have seen a lot of Baitfish feeding on this hatch and sometmes the Lunkers will key in on them.