I met my good friend Tom on the Little J for the famed grannom caddis hatch. For many reasons, this is probably my favorite hatch. I'll never forget my first experience walking right into this hatch and not having a clue what was going on. It was insane! The tough part of this hatch is timing it right. Its a relatively short hatch and one can easily miss it. This day, the bugs were not at peak levels, but were pretty dang good.
It was a cold morning (27 degrees) and the grannoms didn't start emerging until around 10 am. By 10:30 am, the run above me looked like popcorn was popping out of the water with these bugs emerging. What a cool sight to see! There wasn't a ton of dry action so I stayed sub-surface and absolutely had a field day. It was almost every cast at one point. I could watch the trout feeding in the current and it was a bona fide feeding frenzy on the helpless caddis pupa.
It was really a nice day to be on the water. There weren't many people and it felt like we had the stream to ourselves. We ventured upstream and checked out some new water that I had not fished ever before. We fished a solid 6 hours and had a couple cold Dales Pale Ale waiting for us at the truck. I look forward to this hatch again next year.
The train trestles add to the character
Tom took this picture at lunch while I was casting to a rising trout. The big trout was right where you expect him to be ... right in front of the big flat rock (@ 11 o'clock). I made a nice cast and started feeding fly line until the cdc & elk hair caddis drifted carelessly into his feeding lane. Without hesitating he sucked it down. At this point, I had what felt like about 30 feet of slack line I need to bring tight, and needless to say, he was gone...
