Dry Spell Continues

The fields and streams have received some much needed relief from the weekend's rains, but alas, my trout net remains dry. I took whirlwind trip north this weekend hoping to get in on the brown drake hatches, but was either too late or not where I should have been.

Just before 9PM on Saturday, I got onto a spot on the Manistee that's been good to me before. It had rained some in the afternoon, and the stream was a bit cloudy, but not high. A few stoneflies fluttered around. Around 9:45, some feeding began near me, though I could see no insects on or under the water. Tried a few different patterns and received only a short strike on an Isonychia dun. Just after 10, a few brown drake spinners came into view, but never fell. I stayed on the river until 11:30, checking the current with a flashlight from time to time, and while I was there, I saw all of two drake duns rolling by. The feeding never resumed.

Sunday afternoon, I fished another part of the Manistee and finally got the skunk off my line. Smaller brookies were rising to some kind of midges, and I took about a dozen or so with Griffith's Gnats and a small Adams. Many of those were very small. But even the little ones were pretty spooky, and getting any rise felt satisfying.

Glad it happened in the afternoon, because the evening was another bust. Tried the South Branch of the Au Sable toward the center of the Mason Tract. While working upstream before dusk, I got a couple of strikes skittering a stonefly pattern away from cover. That's a technique I'd like to experiment with a bit more. (any tips would be appreciated!) For much of the evening, two beavers were working their way upstream alongside me, sometimes falling back, sometimes swimming ahead, and apparently paying me no mind. I've never seen them that bold around people before. And I'd never been close enough to one to hear it chewing before. They do make pretty short work of those limbs.

I set up in a log-strewn run below a riffle around sunset and scanned the skies for spinners. None came. Not a one. Zippo. For around ten minutes on either side of 10:00, there were occasional rises coming from the seams of the riffle. None suggested a large fish, but at that point I wasn't too picky. Once again, no flies visible either on top or in the film. And once again, I got a short strike on an isonychia. A while after the feeding had stopped, while scanning the water with my light, I saw a sulfur dun drift by. Was that the secret? I've seen them come off that way before, briefly around nightfall and mostly out of sight, but usually earlier in the season. I really couldn't say what was happening--kind of like my outing on the PM last weekend. This is a disturbing trend--nights with perfect conditions for dry fly fishing, rising fish, and nary a hookup.
June is a month with epic possibilities for fly anglers, but you never know if the epic will be a romance or a tragedy.

Actually, some of the most interesting parts of this trip came during run-ins with humans. Those stories coming later this week.