Green Drakes and Bed Bugs

This post is about a new fly pattern based off of an ever increasingly present bug.

The bed bug.  I caught a 8lb brook trout off of the blue ridge parkway on a blue line with this fly. JK. Thats bs. However, I did get to see maybe the biggest variety of "trout flies" flying around earlier this week.

Monday I fished way over in Macon County and saw a very wide variety of bugs on the water. I even got to see my first green drake, and fish a green drake hatch for about 3 hours.

The Legendary Green Drake

The green drake is a massive mayfly, that has been just a legend to me for years.  Ofcourse, i didn't have any green drake dries, so I threw the biggest mayfly I had in the box ( a big irresistible adams), and managed only 5 or 6 little wild rainbows over the course of the hatch.  Their guts were HUGE from eating the drakes, and my buddy later told me I should have tried a green wooly booger, because they were probably keying on emergers.  I did have green wooly boogers, and that could have been the ticket.

Here are some of the other bugs flying around Tuesday.

I saw tan, black, and molted caddis flies

Little Yellow Sallie Stoneflies

Sulfur Mayflies

Big Tan Stoneflies

I also saw a number of different midges, some carrying a bubble like egg sac that was 50 times the size of the midge. 

It was in the low 60s until about 2, then the temp started dropping fast into the 40's.  I saw the sallies and sulfurs when it was warmer, and then the drakes starting coming off as the clouds increased and the temp fell.  The caddis were sporadic all day.  There was moderate to good surface feeding through out the day, the heaviest with the drakes between 4 and 6.

I managed no more than 10 trout, all wild bows no bigger than 10 inches.  Most were closer to 5 or 6 inches.  It sure is beautiful country in the far west of the state.  My camera battery was dead, so no pics!

Tight lines all my ninjas.