One item on my angling to-do list for a few years has been to hit the gray drake hatch on the Muskegon or Pere Marquette. On the Mo it's said to bring out some of the larger holdover fish, and of course on the PM it may be the major "big fish" hatch after the hex. Plus, I've needed to redeem myself after squandering the one good gray drake hatch I ever hit (as related in my last posting ...). With some warm days predicted over the weekend, I thought it was a good time to try.
Got on the Muskegon at Pine st. Saturday evening around 7:30. I could see the sporadic rises to caddis, mostly by planter dinks, that you always see there and did catch a few juniors on a tan soft hackle. A little after 8 I saw more consistent, quiet rises, mostly on the edges of current lines on the edges of riffles or behind large rocks. Some very nice fish were porpoising. My soft hackle got ignored, as did versions of the tan and olive caddis that were fluttering about. The only other bugs around in any quantity were black dancer caddis (Mystocides sepulchralis), flies I see on other trout streams later in the season that, in my observation, don't draw much attention from trout. Saturday night they were covering my legs and, as I found when I stooped and scanned the surface at eye level, were swarming the river. I put on the smallest black caddis I had, a #18 dry (intended to mimic the larger, lighter Chimarra aterrima that hatch in May), and drew a couple of short strikes with it. The trout continued to feed until well after dark but I couldn't connect. Gray drake spinners did appear high overhead around 9:00, but didn't fall. After leaving the water saw that from the knees down my waders were covered with what looked like green pustules--caddis eggs.
After scoping out a few other river sections Sunday morning, I drove to Parsley's Sports in Newaygo to look for a proper imitation of the little bugs. My hopes weren't high, but I did find a couple of what looked like aterrima emergers in a size 20 and bought two. Now all I needed was an encore of the hatch.
Which is what I got, sort of. Those soft rises along the current lines showed again just after 8, though in the volume of the night before. Twice I saw the larger fish porpoising. On the second or third drift with the little emerger I got a solid take from a bait-size planter--nothing it brag about, but an improvement on the previous night. I eventually took four fish in the double digits (the best 14") along with more planters. The rises had more or less ceased by 9, and my wader legs were only lightly pimpled with eggs when I left the river. Not a hallmark night, but a satisfying one for having figured out the hatch and been able to match it, even if it was a bit of a no-brainer in this case. I am looking forward to trying my new acquisitions later this summer when black dancers are out on the smaller streams I fish. Maybe the trout have more interest in them than I've assumed.
Next: Pere Marquette on 6/6
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