Cracking the Code

As we roll into summer, the river is alive with lots of hungry fish and lots of food choices. Anglers are often confounded by what flies to fish.  The fish are always eating.  What they are eating and how to present our flies, is the endless question.  Lots of caddis are hatching.  PMD’s are coming on.  Yellow Sallies are on the brink.  A random hopper hits the water from time to time. You might be able to feed them an ant or a beetle.  I watched a mouse get destroyed after Terrys’ dog frightened it off the bank.  Hmmm.  A few baetis are still around.  Midges are always present.  Scuds and sow bugs and crayfish are in the mix.  A San Juan Worm can catch a fish here and there.

The decision on what to fish is often determined by how you want to fish.  If you are happy to nymph, you can pick a couple good flies and cover lots of water.  You will find fish that want your offerings.  If you want to swing caddis pupa or softies, find the right water and you can coax some fish.  If you want to fish streamers, you better pick the right time of day or the right weather.  If you want to fish dries to particular rising fish, you may need to crack their code.

My friend Kevin is a code cracker.  He’s ties lots of bugs in every stage and style and he knows them very well.  He prefers to find some rising fish and work through his bugs until he cracks the code of what they are eating.  He’s a fish-brain hacker.

I went out the other day and decided I wanted to catch fish on a 3wt spey rod.  I figured my best bet was to fish caddis pupa and soft hackles.  I caught a couple fish, missed a few more, but never felt like I was in the game.  Then I checked in with Kevin.  Kevin was momentarily confounded.  I can’t figure out what they are eating he said.  I caught a few on a PMD dry, a few on a PMD emerger and a few on a Caddis emerger, but now they are not eating those flies.  I said, "What; you’ve landed 10 fish on dries, in the middle of the day, under a clear blue sky, and you are not feeling that you’ve figured things out? Kevin said, "At the moment, no." He need to crack the code-again.  Then Kevin explained what he thought might be happening before tying on a new fly.  I watched him hook up a 20" brown on the first drift.  Then he got a couple more.  Then Terry and I got a couple, thanks to Kevin’s code cracking.

Lesson learned.  The code frequently changes.  It is continually rewritten.  Look at all the options available to the fish and make sure you have several good patterns to represent each of them.  Then get cracking.  That’s a big part of why we love to trout fish.  It’s not always easy, but it sure feels good when you have the code.  At least for a little while.