There is one! Hey there is another, and another! The hatch is on! Late August, overcast and relatively warm. Cutthroat love green drakes. The smaller variety, flavs, were hatching on an eastern slopes river this past week and the cutts were not going to pass up these mayflies.
It was fun to just sit on a bank and watch a large pod of sizeable cutthroat trout inhale flavs by the mouthful! I was experimenting with my camera to see if I could catch the moment that the cutthroat engulfed a flav. I did get some neat pictures but not quite the one I was hoping for. Close but I learned how to approach a full blown hatch for next time.
The cutts would often eat the flavs both on the surface and slash at the emerging flavs as they headed for the surface. There were times that we could see 8 to 10 cuts rising to eat these mayflies.
For the fly fishermen, a smaller green drake imitation is a good choice but maybe even better is an emerger fished just under the surface. Try tying a Quigley's Cripple in green drake colours.
We took some throat samples that showed what we had suspected.
Well the hatch last about 90 minutes. It was a blast fly fishing and photographing all the action!
These well conditioned cutties were eating as many flavs as they could.
The cutthroat below burped up several flavs while resting in the net!
The big cutthroat arrive on the scene when the flavs start emerging!
These flavs were climbing on the rocks everywhere for about 2 hours at the run we were fly fishing!
Many of us are used to using a throat pump on lakes. Phil Rowley pulled his out to take a look at what was going on. Out of the 5 bugs in this cutthroat's throat, 4 were green drakes and the other was a common fly.
These simple impostors did the job nicely although a good emerger pattern would have helped catch more cutts! Take a look at the emerger pattern that Dr. Bill Young showed me a few days back. Looks like a winner!
These cutties were slamming as many flavs as they could along with several of their buddies!
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