Random Thought

[LuvMy1wt]

I thought I would share one of my theories with everyone and maybe one or two people will find it useful.

The majority of my dries are the same pattern and I simply varie the color and size. I have chosen a pattern that works for both emergers and cripples so I can fish it from the very beginning of the hatch until when the hatch is over.

The pattern I have chosen is a Sparkle Dun tied with a snowshoe rabbit wing tied on an emerger style hook.

The other big advantage other than organization is tying. By following this ides you don't have to keep as many materials on hand. The other even more significant help is in tyinf one pasttern over and over. By tying the same pattern in different sizes and colors you will get faster. Being able to tie them quickly will hopefully mean you can carry more flies and have what you need the time arises.

Paul

[IDRYFLY]

I couldn't agree more.....the sparkle dun is an awesome pattern style....deer hair, snowshore hair, CDC, Polypro, even wound hackle trimmed flush can all be used for the wing - and the curved hook/emerger style pattern seems to be the most productive. I am partial to the TMC 2488. Heck...you don't even have to necessarily add a "shuck" on every time (of course then it becomes more like a klinkhammer variation). I also think color variation can be simplified. Barring a highly selective situation....using standard light cahill thread/dubbing if presented properly covers most of the light colored mayflies/sulphers if the size is close to the naturals.

[jason]

Sparkle duns are great and I have many in my box (I'm partial to cdc) but I have had fish refuse them and the same fish hit a higher riding dun or a just submerged floating nymph. Having confidence in a fly is important but, in the end, it's the fishes opinion that matters. Besides, half the fun is "cracking the code" of a picky fish!

[BrownChickenBrownTrout]

You would be a lumper (from the previous conversation).

I am by no means a great fisherman. I'm just getting to ok. But I do know that a trout has an IQ of 6, and they find rocks and sticks in there stomachs on a regular basis. So fooling then shouldn't be too hard.

[Silver Creek]

The IQ is irrelevant and so are the rocks and sticks.

What you are really saying is that the trout that hit rocks and sticks are feeding opportunistically.

However, when they are feeding selectively, by definition they will not eat a rock or a stick UNLESS that rock or stick matches the search pattern that the fish is looking for and the behavior that the fish is looking for.

And if I have said this once, I have said this 100 times and not just on this BB - fish exhibit population dynamics. Not every fish acts identically alike at the same time. So the behavior of one or even several fish that you catch DOES NOT PROVE that what you caught the fish on is the only pattern or even the only TYPE OR STAGE of a hatch that will catch a fish. All you have proven is that SOME or POSSIBLE MANY of the fish will take the fly you are using. Having said that, the sparkle dun is one of the better stage 4 emergers.

You may not believe this story but I was fishing in a well know tailwater where a friend called me over because there were fish feeding that he could see and they would not take any of his flies including a sparkle dun and a comparadun. We were literally less than 10 feet from the fish. They were not shy and they see literally hundreds of anglers a week. We could see that they were feeding on adult Blue Winged Olives (Baetis). And not emergers but the dun stage.

So I put on a Swisher and Richards no hackle pattern and immediately hooked up. After several fish, the rest of the fish kept feeding but I could not catch them. They refused the S & W no hackle so I stopped casting and looked closely at the fish. They were refusing even the naturally floating duns. So I looked even closer and I saw something I had never seen before.

What they were feeding on duns with one wing tipped down toward the water. So I trimmed my fly so that it would float cocked to one side and I took several more fish.

Why so super selective? The reason is the fertility of this river, and the reproducibility and length of the BWO hatch. The blue wing olive hatch had been going on for weeks at the same time of day. It was also a super hatch so that the fish could feed sub-selectively, not only on a single stage of a hatch, but only on one sub-selection of that hatch stage. Only during the heaviest of hatches can a fish get it's fill of a sub selection of a single stage of a hatch.

The denser the hatch, the more opportunity that super or sub selectivity will develop. Denser hatches require very fertile rivers, either spring creeks or tail waters whose calcium rich waters and stable flows with stable temperatures mimic spring creeks.

Your own personal experience determines what you think is going on and what will work. Don't let that blind you to what techniques are needed when the situation changes. The sparkle dun is a great fly and it will work most of the time. But I will tell you that I have been in situations when a sparkle dun would not work but a parachute fly would.

If I had my choice of one fly, the sparkle dun vs parachute, I would take the parachute. With the parachute I can cut off the post and the parachute hackle becomes the wings of a spent spinner. I can bend the hook and cut off the tail fibers and turn it into a Klinkhammer which is an earlier stage 3 emerger. I can cut down the wing to a nub and cut down the parachute hackle and mash them so that they simulate legs and turn the parachute into a passable stage 2 floating nymph.

You can tailor your flies if you fish a single river, but you should not assume that the sparkle dun only approach will work in other situations. I can tell you that it does not.

[LuvMy1wt]

Like I said just a random thought. My point is that learning one fly very well and keeping things simple can be a very effective way to go for those of use who lack your experience or skills.

[Silver Creek]

I want to apologize to you for my post above. Having re-read it, it sounds too much like criticism and too little like help. That was not my intent.

My intent was to open the door to other possibilities and not close the door on your approach. For giving you the wrong impression, I apologize.

[northcountryman]

Naw, I think you're good Silver! Your post was VERY informative: descriptive and to the point.Very interesting obsevrations on your part and their incredible detail underscores your experience on the water as a trout fisherman. Great post!

NCMan

[Halliday]

I second that. I think some experience and a wealth of stream side observation is a great teacher. I learned a thing or two from reading your post.

[Silver Creek]

The underpinnings of my post is based on how I view selectivity. Since pictures or in this case illustrations are worth 1000 words here are a few hundred words and the diagrams to illustrate what I believe happens during the development of selectivity and super selectivity.

Below are two Venn diagrams that illustrate what happens during a hatch and how selectivity develops.

The vertical Venn diagram below demonstrates what happens during a hatch with the nymphs turning into emergers and emergers into adults. Note that the size of each of the portions is relative to the timing of the hatch. In the diagram below, most of the nymphs that will emerge during that hatched have already turned into adults. At any given time the number of emergers is relatively small compared to the number of nymphs and adults BUT the emergers are trapped in the film so they may be small in absolute terms but they are huge relative to the number of the insects that can be taken by the fish. Most of the adults are already in the air and the majority of the remaining nymphs have not yet begun to emerge.






The longitudinal Venn diagram below shows the development of selectivity in the fish as they go through a transition phase from opportunistic to selective feeding. Before the hatch they are feeding opportunistically and as the hatch develop they become selective.





If we look at the population of trout as a population distribution of feeding behavior and graph the number of fish in the Y Axis and selectivity along the X axis we get an approximation of a bell curve. The blue curve is when most of the population is feeding opportunistically and the center of the curve gradually moves to the right to the pink scale as they become selective.




The graph below demonstrates what happens if the hatch last a long time and is regular and heavy. The population begins to cluster and feed more alike as virtually all the fish center around a core of selective behavior. There are relatively fewer and fewer outlier fish that exhibit no selective behavior. Again they move from a wide spread blue distribution to a more consistent pink bell distribution where the behavior is more uniform across all the feeding fish.





What the graphs demonstrate is an idealized situation. For this to occur in the real word, the macro and micro environment of each fish would have to be identical. Every fish would have to have access to the same number of nymphs, emergers and adults as every other fish. That cannot and does not occur in the real world.

So as you move from place to place in a river, the fishes behavior will mirror the change in environment from where your were to where you are.

Isn't that why we move from a place we are not catching fish in to a place where we hope we will catch fish in? The graphs and explanation above is the scientific underpinning of why we do what we do to catch fish as selectivity develops during a hatch.

For example, say we are faced with almost all the fish feeding super selectively as in the pink graph above. Frustrated with not being able to "match the hatch" we employ the "hatch breaker strategy" of using a fly that is completely different that the hatch but familiar to the fish when they are feeding opportunistically. So we put on an ant or a beetle or we strip a big streamer. Unfortunately this does not work and with our knowledge of what is going on with these "Red Zone" super selective fish, we decide to move.

We move and find that our hatch breaker strategy is picking up fish. Why? It is because we have found a population that is in the "Green Zone" and those at the lower end of that green bell curve are still open to feeding opportunistically to the hatch breaker fly we are presenting.