Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Tricos


In the heat of summer, the best trout fishing in the Lehigh Valley area is relegated to tailwaters and limestone streams. Outside of terrestrials and midges, the only major hatch occurs from the tiny trico mayfly and it runs from July all the way until the first cold snap in October. The earlier you hit this hatch the easier it will be to fool the trout since they become more educated to flies as the hatch progresses. The Little Lehigh is often a sure bet to fish the trico hatch, but tricos can be found on a lot of waterways, including freestone streams.

I had my good friend Patrick out on the Little Lehigh to fish for a few hours in the morning and we found ourselves locked in battle with pods of small rainbows and browns eating tricos. Pat is new to the sport and absolutely loves the challenge of fishing for trout with dry flies. I found a few Al's Tricos and Griffith's Gnats in my fly box, tapered an already long leader down to 6x, and tried to get him on a trout. After two hours, he missed dozens of fish, every way imaginable. Fishing tricos requires a very accurate cast to a feeding fish's lane and with all the naturals, it requires a perfect dead drift. Those are two areas in which beginning fly fishermen struggle most. Frustrated, he routinely handed me the fly rod to show him the tiny flaws in his game and I obliged by catching many of the fish he was working for the two hours. Frustrating as it was, it was a good lesson to learn the subtle nuances with fishing tiny flies to educated trout.




1 comment:

Dub The Thorax said...

I finally got out for the first time in ages for trout a few weeks back and the fish are definitely smart now. They've been hammered in the LL. I did manage to get a fat Pally on a size 24 spinner and a few others though. Nice fish