BWOs on the Yakima. BWOs are one of my favorite hatches and the Yakima is a great place to experience it. As part of a week-long shakedown trip with a new-to-us A-frame trailer,
a friend and I fished for several days on the Yakima.
Early on our first float, we encountered what I was hoping for, a heavy afternoon emergence (“hatch”) of blue-winged olive mayflies. These pretty mayflies are small, under ¼” in body length.
When there are many emerging mayflies, the trout will pool up to pick them off. As the energetic gain of each tiny fly is small, the fish migrate from the deeper water runs to shallower slower-flowing pools or breaks in the current. They may hold behind a boulder or drop into a depression in the river bottom to escape the current while waiting for the next bug to float by. They won’t move very far from their feeding lane, maybe a foot or so in width, to sip a passing fly. But they will hold these positions reliably for a half-hour or more, allowing opportunities to target individual fish with precision casting.
You have to use small flies (size 18 or smaller) to imitate blue-winged olives. These Yakima trout are quite familiar with the perils of artificial flies. You have to cast your fly such that it drifts down in the feeding lane of an individual fish without any drag (i.e., a natural float). Even if you do everything right, the fish may ignore your fly this time. But if you are persistent, you will hook fish.
There isn’t much connecting you to the hooked fish. And that’s when your next problem emerges, how to land frisky trout with such tiny barbless hooks. You can do everything right and still have multiple fish get off. But it is part of the game and fun none the less. I switched through a few fly styles before I found a pattern that worked which I also shared with fishing buddy.
Per usual, most fish were rainbows, quite healthy and frisky rainbows.
But I even managed to land a westslope cutthroat, relatively common higher in the river but rarer in the canyon.
I will need to spend some time at my fly-tying vise this winter to rebuild my stock of tiny BWO patterns.
The new trailer will make fall and spring fishing adventures to rivers and lakes on the east side far more comfortable.
Steve
a friend and I fished for several days on the Yakima.
Early on our first float, we encountered what I was hoping for, a heavy afternoon emergence (“hatch”) of blue-winged olive mayflies. These pretty mayflies are small, under ¼” in body length.
When there are many emerging mayflies, the trout will pool up to pick them off. As the energetic gain of each tiny fly is small, the fish migrate from the deeper water runs to shallower slower-flowing pools or breaks in the current. They may hold behind a boulder or drop into a depression in the river bottom to escape the current while waiting for the next bug to float by. They won’t move very far from their feeding lane, maybe a foot or so in width, to sip a passing fly. But they will hold these positions reliably for a half-hour or more, allowing opportunities to target individual fish with precision casting.
You have to use small flies (size 18 or smaller) to imitate blue-winged olives. These Yakima trout are quite familiar with the perils of artificial flies. You have to cast your fly such that it drifts down in the feeding lane of an individual fish without any drag (i.e., a natural float). Even if you do everything right, the fish may ignore your fly this time. But if you are persistent, you will hook fish.
There isn’t much connecting you to the hooked fish. And that’s when your next problem emerges, how to land frisky trout with such tiny barbless hooks. You can do everything right and still have multiple fish get off. But it is part of the game and fun none the less. I switched through a few fly styles before I found a pattern that worked which I also shared with fishing buddy.
Per usual, most fish were rainbows, quite healthy and frisky rainbows.
But I even managed to land a westslope cutthroat, relatively common higher in the river but rarer in the canyon.
I will need to spend some time at my fly-tying vise this winter to rebuild my stock of tiny BWO patterns.
The new trailer will make fall and spring fishing adventures to rivers and lakes on the east side far more comfortable.
Steve
. Moved to PS thread!
