FFIM

What about the minges?

I live fishing a Hendrickson hatch, but I never seem to hit the emergence in Maine; spinner falls are a different story. I have had some really terrific dry fly fishing on red quill spinner all over Maine. And, while I have hundreds of catskill style dries, I never carry them or use them any more. Purple Haze parachute 12-20; Adams comparadun 12-20; yellowish comparadun 12-20; Mercer's Missing Link- 14-18. Those are my dry flies for caddis and mayflies.

I've had some REALLY memorable days fishing the hendrickson hatch. I worked in the Catskills one year and was able to fish the spinner fall daily. In Maine, I've had great luck with Catskill-style dries fished to eager LLS on a heavily fished water- and for that- they'll always hold a place in my dry fly box. Of course, the other end of the spectrum- I hit a blizzard of an emergence at Shawmut a few years back, without seeing so much as a nose push on the water. Literally millions of bugs in the air and on the water. A lot depends on where and when your fishing a hatch.

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"You never miss the water until the well runs dry" - traditional blues

AS Parker will attest, we saw an epic Hendrickson hatch and rise on GLS 3 years ago...in fact, the Australian expert told us there would be NO rise that day as the weather would cancel any bugs. Best rise in history--- sounded like a classroom full of school kids slurping up spagetti.. But, none for us in the last 2 years in any numbers.

The ALDER hatch has an over-rated position for me now. There was a time when it was killer, but for the last 10 years- nothing of note. And- stoneflies....never seen a rise to hatched stoneflies (naturals). I do better with blue damsel flies than stones (dry).

Hutch

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Fall, the BEST time of year!

There is a decent early yellow sally hatch, which also corresponds to a caddis fly hatch, that is worth fishing on one of my favorite stretches of water. That keeps some yellowish-hued stone fly searching patterns in my boxes.

Caddis and mayflies seem to be like the yin and yang in Maine. When one goes up, the other goes down. An endless cycle of life and death, in the natural order.

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"You never miss the water until the well runs dry" - traditional blues

Before the Sennebec Dam was removed, some of the heaviest hatches I have ever seen occurred just below it on late May/early June evenings. (See my post above about enriched insect life below dams. . . . .)

Anyway, the tail end of the big mayflies--I called them Hendricksons, size 14, brownish/red body, dun wings--overlapped with the start of the heavy caddis hatches. The mayfly spinners would be on the water early evening, and then about dusk the caddis would start and keep going all night long. There would be so many bugs in the air that I'd have to wipe them off my rod at the end of an evening of fishing. Every evening, there would be a period when fish might be taking either one, so we'd split the difference with something like a parachute red quill and a WB caddis wet as a dropper.