A New Hatch
From the Pendergrass Library
The ‘hatch’ would be upon us if the weather would cooperative even just a tiny bit. It’s close, but it isn’t quite here.
Typically we should have had a string of hot, humid days well before July, days with enough heat to leave shirt collars sticking to the backs of your necks, and glasses of beer sweating on the bar. When the mercury gets high enough hexagenia mayflies bust out on the river, hopefully near the bridge by the farm with the pole-light that shines down on the canoe landing, which is where we always go. When it happens anglers trip all over themselves in hopes of hooking into reckless German brown trout; big trout that can’t help themselves for going after the flies.
This all happens after dark, of course, when there are a lot of mosquitoes to contend with, a lot of insect repellent that needs to be applied, and a good amount of swearing as we stumble and fall along the banks of the river. If it were easy everyone would do it.
But this hatch is all predicated on having a cooperative weather pattern. And the weather has not been agreeable this year. It’s been cool, and it has rained a lot. I only recently hauled the giant air conditioner out of the basement. It’s been like that this year.
As with most anglers I am a creature of habit. The calendar says it should be ‘hatch’ time, so I go to see what’s hatching, if anything. For four nights I’ve gone and stood on the bridge at dusk, at about the time the whippoorwill begins tuning up in the distance, a dense cloud of biting and stinging insects hovering over me. There are other guys there, like me, standing around, seemingly with nothing better to do. We’ll talk about when the hatch will happen. Won’t it be fun? I hope it’s soon. I can’t wait. But it doesn’t always happen. It definitely doesn’t happen on this night.
I am ready. I’ve got flies, and a few extras. Bug spray. Waders. Flash lights; although I lost a brand new one on the first night - it fell out of my waders and some other lucky angler has adopted it. My son said he was glad it wasn’t him that lost the light as he’d certainly have endured a lecture about not keeping track of stuff. I said he could yell at me if he wanted. He didn’t.
When we arrive at the bridge we do string up our fly-rods, just to be at the ready should a hatch occur. Too many times I’ve fumbled in the dark trying to get my gear together, legions of insects swirling around my head, fish leaping everywhere, only to discover a knot in my line or a fly tied incorrectly. The darkness of these nights, and the fact I can’t see as well as I once did, means I’m better off being ready way ahead of time.
When the hatch does finally get here there should be about 10 consecutive days of good fishing. The bugs will pop off at about 10 p.m., the fish will rise, and dreams will be cast about on the water for an hour or so. It won’t be long. Not really. But, it will be enough.
And truly, the fish are naïve when the hatch goes off. Big trout and not-so-big trout will take flies off the surface of the river, falling into a pattern of fishing that can almost be timed with a watch. The trick is to put your fly in front of the rising trout on the count at which it will rise and take the bait. Most times an angler doesn’t actually see the fish rise, and sometimes the take won’t be felt, but it’s heard. You can hear the fish take the fly. It can just be a sense that the fish should be taking the offering, based on the rhythm of the pattern. Oh, you may have to cast a few dozen times to get your fly in front of the fish at the right moment. When anglers are lined up along the river the quiet of the night is often times broken by the soft swishing of fly lines being twirled above the river. It’s a comforting sound, until a fly catches in the brush on a back cast, which leads to mayhem and chaos. But when it goes right it’s a thing of beauty.
But, the hatch isn’t here. Not yet. But it should be soon. And for now we’ll just have to wait.
Darrell Pendergrass lives in Grand View.