May 1st report

As my friend and I were headed out to the stream I mentioned that I was kind of disappointed that it was sunny instead of cloudy like they had predicted. I really wasn’t expecting to have great luck with the low clear water and bright sunshine. My friend was a little more optimistic and said the sun might help a hatch at this time of the year. He has been fly fishing much longer than I have and was obviously much wiser. When we got to the stream at noon there were fish rising everywhere.

There was a hatch of brown caddis going on and the fishing was fantastic. My friend and I fished drys all day and were still catching fish on top until we quit at 7:00, even though the hatch had stopped around 3:00. Fishing was furious for a while and it certainly didn’t continue at that same pace all day, but it was by far the best day of dry fly fishing I have had in my 1+ years of fly fishing.

markp,

SOunds like you had a hoot!! Thanks for the report!!!
What stream were you on?

We definitely need more rain soon!!!! A guy can definitely catch right now, but the future of the trout in SE MN streams is a little on the edge right now!

It’s good to hear a great hatch ws on!! That is a good sign and that is why I was wonderng about which stream, not that I was wanting to hit tonight or anything. SOme streams that have typically produced great hatches in past years are showing limited “bug” growth.

For example, turning up stones in the upper end of the South Branch of the Root, revealed very few larvae after many over turned stones.

Good luck with the “long rod”!!!

Jim W

Jim,

The stream I was fishing is definitely not a secret spot, but I’d rather not say where I was. It has enough people and I’d rather not see anymore there.

The water is definitely low. There were some riffles that are normally very good that were fishless because the water was too low. We turned over rocks and saw many different insects. The water flow doesn’t seem to have had a major impact on the insects in this stream, at least not yet.

Chance of rain on Sun and Mon. lets hope we actually get it this time.

Mark, did you catch mostly browns and did you tie into any lunkers? A couple of times I’ve been out and seen fly fisherman catching fish on flies when I couldn’t on spinners and cranks. I might have to take up fly fishing again for those times.

birdman,

All the fish I caught were browns. I caught a couple that were pushing 14, but most of them were 8-11 inches. There were a couple of spots that I caught a bunch of 4 inchers. They were probably all sitting together in those locations to keep away from the bigger fish.