By
Thomas Ames Jr.
"The
Hendricksons"
Fly fishermen have a curious
habit of naming insects for the first pattern created
to imitate them. The season's first "superhatch" is a
classic example of this phenomenon. Roy Steenrod, a
Catskills game warden and the only person known to
have received tying instruction from Theodore Gordon,
designed a fly to match the freshly hatched Ephemerella subvaria and named it after his
friend Hendrickson.
Steenrod's creation matches
only the female dun. The male, known popularly as the
Red Quill (guess why), has a much redder body, huge
tomato red eyes and is a full hook size smaller. The
two genders are known to emerge from separate
microhabitats. But if the rising fish aren't taking
your high floating red quill or Hendrickson it
probably has little to do with being gender selective.
More likely they are choosing to dine only on the
emergers that are momentarily immobilized in the
surface film by the struggle to escape their from
their larval shucks.
The Hendrickson hatch offers
plenty of opportunities for the fish to feed without
ever risking a trip to the surface. If you take a
moment to turn over a few rocks in knee deep water
your will find subvaria nymphs by the score,
large, fat, with a light patch in the middle of their
otherwise dark olive abdomens and darkened, well
developed wing cases that indicate they are ready to
hatch. You'll also find many of their Ephemerella cousins, rotunda and invaria (the pale evening duns) that are nearly
the same size but lack the light patch, and dorothea (the little sulphur), quite a bit
smaller and still a few weeks away from emergence. As
the hatch nears Ephemerella nymphs ride the
current in search of slack areas where they make a
series of exploratory trips through the water column.
At such times a nymph pattern drifted deep with the
current or made to swim through the pockets may very
well result in your biggest fish of the day.
Don't make any plans for an
early dinner at Hendrickson time, because the spinner
fall offers the best opportunities for dry fly
fishing. A spinner fall is a hatch in reverse, only
more concentrated, because in order to perpetuate the
species the entire population has to be there at the
same time. Spent males may fall anywhere, but the
females, known as rusty spinners, expire on the water
soon after laying their eggs. With so much food
floating by the fish doesn't have to move very far
from its feeding lane, so your placement must be
accurate and your drift absolutely drag free.
The best pattern choices
always come from the folks who fish the river year in
and year out, so check the river report or contact the
HRO staff for recommendations. Be sure to have plenty
of nymph patterns because if you're not getting hung
up occasionally you aren't getting your fly where the
fish are.
As you stand by the river
gearing up, don't forget to look down at the rocks for
the Glossosoma caddis, a smallish insect with
dark brown wings and a dirty yellow abdomen. These
caddises rise to the surface as pupae and run or swim
across it to shore, where they climb out and complete
the transition to adulthood. Fish will usually chase a
skittered pupa pattern and ignore a dead drift. Then
keep a watchful eye in the evening, because the fish
you think is rising to the Hendricksons may in fact be
focused on egglaying Glossosoma.
Hendrickson time is also
Paraleps time, the little size 18 iron blue or
mahogany dun. Just recently I photographed one in the
act of emergence and noticed a few remarkable things.
First is that it periodically turned upside down, and
I could see what looked like cellophane wrapping
around its thorax, actually the air spaces created as
the dun began to separate from its nymphal skin. It
couldn't emerge until I placed a rock in my photo
tank, whereupon it grabbed hold as if to steady itself
for some great exertion. Then it released its grip to
float freely. The wing case split open and the dun
drew itself forward out of the shuck. Actual emergence
took about twenty seconds.
This behavior is consistent
with the tendency of Paraleptophlebia nymphs to
school up near the rocky stream edges when they
emerge. If you see fish working the margins, show it a
slender nymph pattern or a reddish brown CdC emerger
and see what happens.
-Thomas Ames
Jr.-
Thomas Ames Jr. is a
commercial photographer and author of Hatch Guide
For New England Streams. He lives in Norwich
Vermont and makes frequent visits to the
Housatonic.
For more information and
photographs of fly fishing insects visit www.thomasames.com/insects
