I got out on Memorial Day morning for some long rodding with a friend from Duluth. We checked one stream south of 90 at 8:00 and there were four cars already parked there (I’m not much for torut angling with crowds). We drove another 10 minutes and got one valley away and didn’t see a soul for the rest of the day.
I nymphed the whole day with a tandem rig of either a #16 rust biot PT, green caddis larve, or a BWO wet fly emerger of my own conccction produced one day at the bench this winter. The trail fly was a #16 Black Wet Fly. For those of you who fly fish and haven’t been using terrestrial patterns lately, you should definitely consider giving it a try. The only reason I used the green caddis larvae was that stomach samplings showed trout were gorging pretty heavily on them, thus the obvious choice in patterns.
My partner in crime caught a few on top early in the AM with a #18 Fluttering Caddis dry, then switched over to a Stimulator and a dropper (Black wet fly or olive hare’s ear) and fished dries and droppers the whole day. We ran into some stonefly dries, which is pretty neat considering they don’t hatch on the water like many aquatic nymphs but actually walk to shore, molt, and fly away.
Water levels are extremely clear and low. Fish are very spooky even with the onset of streamside growth, so being cautious and making long accurate casts with fine tippet (I fished 6x the whole day) is a must.
We kept a few 9-10 inchers for the grill, something I should do more of on streams with prolific numbers of fish, and they were awesome.
The Light Hendricksons have started on some streams and should be in full swing on many streams throughout the week.