Early season flies.

[Malcolm]

Last season was a bit of a learning experience for me - every season is. However last year i discovered why clyde style flies are really deadly at times. Fishing in a stiff wind the adult flies were being drowned - something not obvious unless you were actually in the water at the time of the hatch. These were floating down just a few inches under the surface and the fish were ignoring the flies on the surface and the nymphs. They were going for the easy prey - drowned adults. Once I had that sussed it led to some really good fishing while the rise was on. I'll have a couple of clyde style LDOs and March Browns in case I come across the same conditions again. 

[Traditionalist]

I invariably do well on this when the adult olives are drowned;



Yellow silk well waxed with clear wax, ( turns it a translucent olive), ribbed gold wire. Wing is a sparse bunch ( 4...6 fibres) of waterhen. "Hackle" is a small amount of hare's ear around the hook and the wing.

For a good march brown like that: Body orange silk very sparsely dubbed with dark hare's ear. Wing 4...6 fibres brown partridge, thorax and hackle dark hare's ear.

TL
MC

[haresear]

Now that looks very nice indeed. I'll be tying some of those :

Alex

[bibio1]

I have had success with dry ldo's but march browns have always been a mystery to me. Best fishing I had had have been during mb hatches but always with a nymph. I might take up you advice Malcolm.

Nice tie mike.

Cheers

Paul

[Wildfisher]

After a very poor early season in the NE  last year I had also been giving this some thought and remembering  various posts on drowned duns I was wondering if the old and now nearly lost technique of upstream wets / spiders would do the trick. That was my plan for this year anyway.

[Traditionalist]

The flies I posted will only work well when fished upstream Fred, or at least with a dead drift. Anything other than "dead drifting" causes too much movement and puts the fish off. Dead drifting drowned duns don't drag!

Minimal drag, ( which is always present on sub-surface flies), is advantageous as it causes slight movement.

Basically they are fished like conventional dry flies. I have done exceedingly well with them. Much better than with "ordinary" spiders. They are really only "half spiders"!  The slight wing movement works a lot better than a full hackle movement when imitating drowned duns. Also of course, they look a lot more like real flies than most spiders do.

TL
MC

[zeolite]

Just getting a box filled for some early season rainbows, browns, cut throats, cutbows and indeed splakes. There may have been some buckets involved!

[Black-Don]

Just getting a box filled for some early season rainbows, browns, cut throats, cutbows and indeed splakes. There may have been some buckets involved!

Those'll do well for the target species. I've found the black and red bugger/egg sucking leech type things
very good bow catchers.

Are the Splake stocked or natural as it's rare for them to reproduce as a single species ?

[zeolite]

The North Platte is an artificial river, controlled by dams and the spawning is not great. A lot of fish are stocked and it seems like it is hard to tell as they adapt very quickly. The cutbows breed very well I am told. The splakes are stocked.

I am told white is a good colour early on.

[daring duffer]

I invariably do well on this when the adult olives are drowned;



Yellow silk well waxed with clear wax, ( turns it a translucent olive), ribbed gold wire. Wing is a sparse bunch ( 4...6 fibres) of waterhen. "Hackle" is a small amount of hare's ear around the hook and the wing.

For a good march brown like that: Body orange silk very sparsely dubbed with dark hare's ear. Wing 4...6 fibres brown partridge, thorax and hackle dark hare's ear.

TL
MC

I tied some of these and sent to a friend in Montana. He fished them in DePuy Spring Creek a few days ago, on a three fly cast (the third fly being a spider) upstream. He used a silk line and a bamboo rod and the first rainbow trout took the March Brown softwing on the second cast. He then continued catching on these flies the rest of the day. He was very impressed but told me that the wing only lasted one fish after which it fished as a nymph. He suggested a fuller wing made from chickabou or maybe fibers from some feather. I replied that maybe the sparseness and mobility is what makes this pattern work so well. I have not had the opportunity to use them myself yet.

Any thoughts?

Stefan