Fishing dry flies below the dam..

[Brian K. Shaffer]

OK.. so the weather is hot.. but so is the beetle and ant activity!

I have been seeing a little beetle for a couple of weeks now, and the ants have been showing up in big numbers as of late. If you (like me) ever are tired of the same old indicator scud/midge rig.. or scud/sanjuan worm rig.. try to go after the fish with the dry.

Target an area where fish show themselves rising rather constantly. If you find rising fish (rather they are midging or not, they ARE rising to the surface) you can easily catch them on terrestrials (beetles, ants, hoppers.. etc).

It is early in the season for hoppers.. but the dry fly beetles are driving the fish crazy! The plain old dry ant, if presented properly will bring any fish that has been rising UP to to take your immitation.

When times get slow with heat and low water.. look to what comes naturally for the fish, especially when the fish are looking for new means of food due to low water flows.

Beetles. Ants. Crickets. Hoppers. Terristrials are my new good thing.

(The big UGLY is something in and of itself.. so I'll touch on it later).

Brian

[jOrOb]

Lately, I have been using a foam hopper pattern as an indicator for my midge patterns. It is working pretty well. With some chop, fish will take the hopper.

[Barn]

I had a lot of success this past week using a red humpy fish along the bank of the trophy area. This pattern seem to produce all my bigger fish. I was broke off several times by some browns that would have been "overs". I finally had to go to at least 6 lb tippet.