Fly Fishing Tips

Fishing Aquatic Insects *

Match The Hatch

Every book on fly fishing, every instructor on the sport, and every experienced angler who fishes for trout with flies will tell you:  Match the hatch.  The successful fly fisherman figures out what the trout are eating and presents them with a fairly accurate imitation.  This is called matching the hatch.

The “hatch” literally refers to those moments when mother nature flips a switch and an order of aquatic insects make their way to the surface and become adults… in abundant numbers at the same time.  I never thought that as a grown man, the sight of a swarm of insects would excite me, but it does.  It usually means that the dry fly fishing is ON.  Nothing makes my heart skip a beat like witnessing a beautiful beast of a trout break the surface and savagely swallow the fly at the end of my line (ratchet that excitement up another notch if I tied the fly too).

Today, the term “match the hatch” is used more generally for all fly fishing, including nymphing.  So, what exactly do we mean by matching the hatch and how do we do that?  Very simply, we need to make sure the fly we use, regardless of weather it is a nymph, wet or dry fly is going to be of interest to the fish.

Size 

This is the most important characteristic of the fly that anglers can and should control and duplicate.  Fish can and will change how they feed day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute.  As quickly as the hatch is on and the fish are rising, they are gone, eating something below the surface.  The first grasshoppers of the season are often ignored because they are new to the fish (trout have very short memories – which is great if you only know two jokes, they laugh at them over and over).  A week or so later and the fish can’t get enough of those hoppers.  If you identify the correct insect and tie on a beautiful imitation that is too big, the fish will NOT consider itself lucky to have a bigger, tastier meal.  It will think, “I’m not putting that freak of nature in my maw,” and pass it up for what is abundant and correct all around it.  If you’re like me and don’t have the best vision, tying on a size 20 or smaller fly can be tough.  Nonetheless, you will have less opportunity by tying on a bigger fly.  Yes, you will see it, but so will the fish, and they will pass.

Profile

All the aquatic insects have a different profile on or in the water.  For example, The trout can tell from below whether that mayfly is a dun or a spinner because of the wings being upright or laid flat.  Now, sometimes the trout will take your dun when they are keying in on spinners, but the closer you get to the right profile, the more fish you will fool.