Join Clark Fork Coalition and
Montana Trout Unlimited
for the 3rd Annual ‘Guiding Without the Dam’
FWP biologists will describe the state of the fishery at the 2nd anniversary of the removal of Milltown Dam, with special focus on the upper Clark Fork and Flint-Rock drainages, as well as the Clark Fork-Blackfoot confluence.
140 S 4th Street West
Missoula, MT 59801-2703
(406) 542-0539 Get directions
In the meantime, help improve the fishery by weighing in on bull trout habitat today! As Montana’s largest native trout and our primary indicator of watershed health, it’s important to safeguard the rivers, lakes, and streams that bull trout call home. Help us make sure the USFWS proposed critical habitat for bull trout is clean, cool, and connected. SUBMIT COMMENTS today, and ask to include critical habitat for bull trout in the upper river.
This is the second in a pair of articles on fishing the trico hatch. The first is an overview titled, “The joys and agonies of trico fishing.” It describes it as some of the toughest, most technical angling that one encounters during the season and as some of the most gratifying. Jack Mauer of Wapiti Waters looks forward to trico fishing in August and September because of the challenges and rewards of catching trout during this time.
This article describes Jack’s tips to help you reap the rewards and enjoy better success. Jack has broken his tips into six “P”s– patterns, precision of presentation, patience, persistence, practice, and pulse.
1) Patterns: Having a good trico pattern that will match the hatch is obviously very important. Here is the dilemma. On a typical trico morning trout are on the trico spinner – a spinner imitation is a flat-winged hard to see on the water dry fly which has to be tied fairly sparse. A trico spinner imitation is not only difficult to see, it is not a very good floater. Jack and others have come up with an upright wing parachute tied with a white hackle and a visible antron wing that floats reasonably well. It can be sparsely tied on a 16-20 1X short hook. Unfortunately, over tough educated trout it is the flat winged spinner that will work the best. Jack will change to fresh flies often as these patterns get water-logged after 15 minutes despite a brisk false cast and a shot in the drying crystals.
2) Precision of presentation: You need to have good presentations and that means precision in your casting. No matter how good your pattern is, if it is not placed in front of the feeding trout just right he will not eat it. By just right, Jack means in his lane above his mouth with no drag. This is where having the correct casting angle is paramount. You can be a tournament caster and put the fly on a dime but if the pattern is not cast at the correct angle, it won’t be eaten. Across and down is the technique that lends itself to the most success. In flat, slow moving water casting downstream at an acute 15-20 degree angle will ensure that the trout will see your good pattern before he sees a wad of tippet or your dry fly dragging through the “hold.” It is really easy to have drag on these tiny patterns. The use of a long, fine tippet (3 feet of 6X) can be a benefit but you have to control it while in the air and once it is on the water. The rod tip can help eliminate drag when your fly is on the water by initially creating drag. To do this, you must raise the rod to 10-11 o’clock taking all the slack out of the leader to the fly creating the 15-20 degree angle, then dropping the rod tip and letting the fly do its thing on this long harness. This technique will result in an additional 4-6 inch drift.
You can get away with this “resetting” technique 25-30 feet above the riser without being a tournament caster but it has to be accomplished in a smooth motion. When your fly does start to drag out it is best to let it drag behind your target rather than rip it out of the water to attempt another cast. Remember to strip, strip, strip up line before casting to eliminate noise and surface disturbance.
Brown trout caught in the Big Hole during a trico hatch
Photo by Jack Mauer
Sometimes big fish will feed on trico spinners in shallow riffles at the head of pools. In these situations you can decrease the casting angle (to 20-45 degrees) in this faster water but it really helps to have the sun at your back as well. Many times the fish you are after are moving around within the riffle and with all the reflections and refractions, you need all the help you can get to not spook the fish.
A word about leaders around western Montana: When boat fishing, you can get away with a one piece 9 ½ to 10 foot 5X leader. Once out of the boat while wade-fishing, a 12 foot leader with 2-3 feet of 6X tippet will enable one to fish to risers without putting the trout down so long as the fly line is laid down softly with each cast. Because he wants to lay the fly line down very softly, Jack is a big fan of 4 and 5 weight rods. Some even use a 3 weight here.
Classic trico water, bright day
Photo by Jack Mauer
3 & 4) Persistence and patience: These go hand in hand. It usually takes more than several good drifts to finally get a trout to eat your fly. This does require the utmost in persistence and the patience to wait between casts to let a stubborn trout begin to feed again and cannot be understated. Big selective trout can be extremely rhythmic in their feeding mode, so it does make sense that the timing of your cast is almost as important as the accuracy of delivery. The next dry fly fishing purist book could be entitled “the cadence of trout.” Moral of the story, it doesn’t hurt to observe for a while and not cast. Just wait it out while you observe which lends itself to a little poetry, “to cast or not to cast, that is the question.”
Finally, the hook set itself. Again the word here is patience. Many times Jack has pleaded his “God save the queen” raising of the rod to these words with clients to help slow down their hook sets in order to impale the fish. Because the patterns are tied on small gapped hooks you must be slow and methodical in the hook setting. This is a different hook setting technique than the quick hook set usually associated with nymph and bobber rigs and/or larger dry fly fishing. This technique can’t be learned over night. It requires practice.
5) Practice: Yes, he said practice. It does take practice to get good at anything difficult. To truly master this type of trout fishing it is somewhat synonymous with a great hitter in baseball. There are times when you may go into a slump. You aren’t going to get a hit every time at bat, but your percentage of success will improve with practice.
6) Pulse: The pulse of tricos is affected by weather. The best weather patterns that bring on consistent spinner falls are windless, warm partly sunny days. A stable high pressure dome sitting over the Rockies will get trout into a predictable morning feeding rhythm. A change to cool rainy weather will disrupt your spinner falls and cause a down pulse.
In conclusion, you can be doing everything right, make good presentation, hook a beautiful fish with a nice slow hook set, play him for one long run and then have him shake the hook or break off in a weed bed. This is where the joy can turn to agony. But therein lies the challenge of what trout fishing is all about. Hopefully these tips can help you catch more trout during trico time.
Trout rise form during a trico hatch
Photo by Merle Ann Loman
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The Feb 18 BRTU meeting will feature Montana TU Executive Director Bruce Farling. Bruce will be giving a slide presentaion on the subject of:
BEYOND HABITAT: Saving trout from the Bighorn to the Flathead in Montana.
The meeting begins at 7:00 PM at the Hamilton Elks Lodge, 203 State Street, Hamilton and is open to the public.
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Wapiti Waters’ 2010 fishing season forecast based on over 30 years experience in western Montana’s trout fisheries.
Jamie & his Dad.
Jamie his trout in July on the Bitterroot.
Wapiti Waters photo
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February 23 – 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Bitterroot Public Library.
Turning Blue into Green: An Introduction to the Montana Water Market
by Chris Corbin with Lotic Water Marketing.
Flow Restoration in MT: Water Right Leasing, Source Switching & Irrigation Efficiency
by Rankin Holmes with Montana Water Trust.
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The January BRTU meeting will be at 7:00 PM Thursday, January 21 at the Hamilton Elks Lodge, 203 State Street. Travis Horton, who is the Native Fish Coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, will give a presentation about Montana’s Native Trout programs. This will be a great opportunity to learn about what makes [...]
Seasons Greeting from Wapiti Waters in Montana’s Big Sky Country
As we reflect on this past year, we appreciate the gain from our toils and rejoice in the memories of families and angling friends.
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Pinegrass, a bluegrass band, in concert, Kalispell, MT on November 14, 2009.
Music starts at 7:30 pm.
Performance is at the KM Theater. See below for ticket information.
KM Theater (map)
40 Second Street East Kalispell, Mt 59901
$15 tickets are available at
Colter Coffee
424 Main St Kalispell, MT 59901-4849 (406) 755-7826 [...]
Jack Mauer on Rio Chimehuin (Photo by Merle Ann Loman)
Fly fishing in Montana might be similar to fly fishing in Argentina, but Argentina’s open spaces are even vaster. Jack Mauer first visited the Patagonia region of Argentina in February and March of 2006. He knew that there would be great fly fishing and made the [...]
Our original blog began on Blogspot.
Now that I have better skills, this is our newer format. I am changing the template and adjusting widgets for the next few days.
How I am doing? Email wapiti@wapiti-waters.com with comments for me, Merle Ann Loman, webmaster for Wapiti Waters.
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