02/08/10
Insects and other foods the trout may be eating:
1.   Blue-winged Olives
2.   Little Black Winter Stoneflies
3.   Streamers - matching sculpin, baitfish and small crayfish
4.   Midges

Basics of Fly Fishing - Trout Food Series - Caddisflies - Part 4

The Little Black Caddis, or American Grannoms, whichever name you prefer, turn
the trout on in the streams of the Smokies as well as any mayfly that
hatches including the Quill Gordons. They hatch when the water gets around
50 degrees, or at the same approximate time the Blue Quills and Quill Gordons
hatch. We have seen them going strong when the water dropped down to as low as
45 degrees. In fact, we have seen them so cold that they wouldn't fly and you could
just pick them up. In those cases, they hatched a few days prior to that, when the
air temperature was much warmer. We have also seen them dormant like that in the
early cold mornings and then become very active when the air temperatures
warmed up later in the day.

We have caught lots of trout feeding on the Little Black Caddis that were hatching
when the Blue Quill and Quill Gordons were just starting to hatch. We have done
that on several occasions when other anglers were complaining about not catching
anything and blaming it on the fact the Blue Quills and Quill Gordons were not yet
hatching good. I have written about that before trying to inspire anglers to fish the
hatch.

The facts are, most anglers totally ignore the hatch, or worse, are totally unaware of
it. One reason is the lack of local knowledge about caddisflies. By that I mean you
want hear any of the fly shops referring to them hatching, or encouraging anglers to
fish the hatch. That is because most of them are also unaware of the fact trout can
be caught from the hatch, and often far easier than from the Blue Quills or Quill
Gordons. You will hear anglers mentioning that they saw caddisflies or writing about
seeing them on the fly fishing blogs, but it usually ends with "the trout were not
eating them". Now no one knows which of the two caddisflies I mentioned above
they are referring too. We have been unable to catch trout from the Tiny Black
Caddisfly hatch ourselves and we have tried many times. That is why we haven't
developed a "Perfect Fly" pattern to imitate them. I also know for a fact, many
anglers see the Grannoms flying or on the banks and in the bushes and try to catch
trout, when they don't have a clue what it is they are tying to imitate. When that
happens, there is one thing for certain. You missed the hatch. You are too
late trying. Trout want eat those in the air or in the bushes. They will eat the
female egg layers, but that may be days later. Caddisflies can live out of the water a
long time. In fact, that is the number one problem anglers have fishing a caddisfly
hatch of any of the species. They don't recognize the hatch until it is too late
to do them any good.

We will get into the details of when and how these caddisflies hatch and how you
imitate them to catch trout starting tomorrow.

Copyright 2010 James Marsh