Quill Gordon Dries - Throw Them Away

[JackM]

On one of the stream reports this paragraph appears:

"So what does this have to do with ffishing? Well, QG's are spectacular but rarely bring the trouts up. The reason is that they are one of the few mayflies to emerge underwater. So the way to catch trout during the QG emergence is to use a wet fly. Even the old reliables like Quigley Cripples and Klinkhammers won't do much for a QG hatch."

It doesn't ring true to me. I understand that they "emerge" underwater, however, when they reach the surface, they have as much reason, if not more, as any other emerging mayfly to ride the surface before becoming airborne. I have seen QGs ride the surface and some of the classic dry flies are QG duns. So, does the poster have some secret knowledge that no one else has or is he mistaken, mis-speaking, or what?

I would like to be educated because I have a bunch of dry flies that I can recycle the hooks from if they need to be dimantled. :-(

 

[Maurice]

Thats almost as dilusional as saying the Green Weenie is an inchworm immitation and not a junk fly.

What I think Les is trying to say is you'd be more likely to succeed with a wetfly than a dry during a quill gordon hatch. Although he ain't budging on the pattern...I bet it involves ricotta cheese and flat, wide noodles...

 

[JackM]

I think if that is what he said, it would be less puzzling. But clearly, under a non-strained reading, he is saying that the dry is worthless or nearly so. There are many people who feel using the nymph or emerger pattern is more effective during any emergence. While that may be true, some people like me would rather catch less fish than fish a nymph or wet fly during an active hatch. So, are you agreeing, then, that a Quill Gordon dry is less effective than other dry flies because of the fact that they shed their shuck underwater? I could really use a few more size 12 dry fly hooks.

 

[Maurice]

JackM wrote:
.....So, are you agreeing, then, that a Quill Gordon dry is less effective than other dry flies because of the fact that they shed their shuck underwater? I could really use a few more size 12 dry fly hooks.

That would fall under the species cross between and elephant and a Rhinocerous....

Elifino.


I wuld think if the Quill Gordon were completely useless...then we would essentially be destroying the father of american fly fishing. Theodore Gordon would be rolling in his grave to hear us postulate the ineffectiveness of his famous fly.

Look at the way he prhased the whole post and the quizzical ending...come on Jack....is being clever beneath you?


I would rather see you with a strike indicator on your line than a QG dry...but that's me.

 

[FarmerDave]

Rub it in the dirt, and you have an instant wet fly pattern.

Keep in mind, i don't take fly selection quite as seriously as most people do. I don't know the latin names, and I just try to get close when I am trying to match the hatch. So take my opinion for what it is worth on this, which isn't very much.

I think I can answer your question with another question. Have you ever caught any trout on a Quill Gordan pattern?

How about this question. Have you ever caught trout on an adams dry, or a Royal Wulff?

If the answer to either is yes, then why not keep them?

The last two don't look a lot like anything, but look enough like food that they still work. The Adams is arguably the most common used fly pattern and it isn't made to imitate any one bug in particular.

I think a good nymph or wetfly fisherman can catch more trout than a good dry fly fisherman in most cases. I still like to use dry flies when the trout are rising.

My advise to you is spend some of your first communion money (I know you still have it you cheap bugger) and buy some more hooks. :-D

 

[bigjohn58]

So hopefully I don't get snubbed for that one previous post I made but I encountered a lot of quill gordons on the opening day. What does your quill gordong look like? The ones I encountered looked more like a larger light olive. I was thinking of tying up some light bodied bwos in a size 14 to cover the gordons or is there a better pattern to cover this hatch? The quill gordons I have don't look too much like the real thing in my opinion. What about a wet fly pattern?

 

[troutbert]

Maurice wrote:
Thats almost as dilusional as saying the Green Weenie is an inchworm immitation and not a junk fly.

What pattern do you use to imitate the inchworms?

Regarding the Quill Gordon dry flies. Don't throw them away. You can catch trout on them even in streams that don't have Quill Gordons. Even in streams that don't have any mayflies at all. I'm not making this up.

 

[Maurice]

troutbert wrote:

Maurice wrote:
Thats almost as dilusional as saying the Green Weenie is an inchworm immitation and not a junk fly.

What pattern do you use to imitate the inchworms?

What took you so long??? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Green deer hair extended body.

The green weenie in its grandure is no more than powerbait without the scent....That is to say, bait. Just like this post. Just bustin' yer chops TB.

Maurice

 

[Maurice]

bigjohn58 wrote:
So hopefully I don't get snubbed for that one previous post I made but I encountered a lot of quill gordons on the opening day. What does your quill gordong look like? The ones I encountered looked more like a larger light olive. I was thinking of tying up some light bodied bwos in a size 14 to cover the gordons or is there a better pattern to cover this hatch? The quill gordons I have don't look too much like the real thing in my opinion. What about a wet fly pattern?

John,

Below is a pic I took last year in April. The QG's should have mottled wings. (immitated with a wood duck flank feather wing and Grizzley hackle & Brown hackle) Smokey opaque wings on a lighter colored mayfly in a 14 could be a large BWO on Kettle. Or a Hendrickson, both present there. But I'd bet on the olive. Anyway, heres the pic.

 

[troutbert]

Maurice wrote:

troutbert wrote:

Maurice wrote:
Thats almost as dilusional as saying the Green Weenie is an inchworm immitation and not a junk fly.

What pattern do you use to imitate the inchworms?

What took you so long??? :lol: :lol: :lol:

Green deer hair extended body.

The green weenie in its grandure is no more than powerbait without the scent....That is to say, bait. Just like this post. Just bustin' yer chops TB.

Maurice

I guess I took the bait. But wasn't there some advice about baiting on here recently. I thought it was by one of the moderators....

Anyways, I don't use Green Weenies to imitate inchworms, I use the traditional pattern, the Sinking Inchworm, as described by Barry Beck back in the day. Before someone had the notion that putting a little loop on the back constituted a new pattern.

 

[Wulff-Man]

Concerning bigjohn’s post, as I understand it the same species of mayfly can have different coloration/tone in different geographical areas. So a Baetis in one place can be dark olive, while it can be yellow-ish somewhere else. Notice that I said Baetis, and not Blue Wing Olive. As most everybody knows, Blue Wing Olive is a pattern, not a mayfly species. Although the patterns also can vary slightly in coloration depending on the local mayfly coloration. Like there are pale yellow Sulfurs, and deeper orange-yellow Sulfurs. The normal way for fly fishers to communicate the type of fly to use on a particular stream is by the pattern name. So when you’re told that there are Quill Gordons on a stream, you use the common pattern. If the local fly varies somewhat from the accepted Quill Gordon pattern, hopefully someone will give you this information. Now, if Kettle Creek has an Eporus Pleuralis (commonly accepted to be a Quill Gordon, I believe) that has the coloration of a Blue Wing Olive, then it would seem that the best way to communicate the correct fly to use would be to call it a #14 Blue Wing Olive. But what if it has a dark brown barred wing and brown legs, but an olive body? Then I guess it might be best to describe it as an olive-bodied Quill Gordon? But this kind of detail usually isn’t conveyed on generic hatch charts. Does it matter to the fish? Sometimes yes, sometimes no, I would say. The only foolproof solution is to know the bugs on the stream real well yourself, to get inside information from someone who does, take a trip to the local fly shop, or to bring your fly tying stuff with you if you are traveling somewhere to fish . Or you can use Royal Wulffs, Adams, green weenies, and ants!

 

[Bamboozle]

Wulff:

Great advice except when the locals have a totally DIFFERENT name for what you may call your pattern. I've run into that more than a few times.

I have heard all kinds of "Quill" pattern names used to describe the same bug as well as many "Drake" names used for one critter. Of course then you have all of the different names used as you go across the country.

While it really is perceived as a bit snobbish or weird; I still like to know the real bugs name because even with local variations in color; I still have a very good idea of color; size and most importantly; if I do a little research I learn about the behavior which is how this subject got started in the first place.

In my experience; "Quill Gordon" NYMPHS are the least important thing to imitate because the fish really never see them. Wets, emergers, and dries are what they see; at least that's what I catch them on.

Buy hey; what ever system works best for you is what you should use. I like entomology and you don't have to get crazy to have a good-enough-for-flyfishing knowledge of it to help you make fly choices.

 

[Padraic]

I must be doing something wrong, because I clearly remember catching fish on QG's when the bug was coming back to the water to lay eggs. In fact, I had a couple misses because the trout jumped up out of the water to try and catch it in the air.

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

if thats wrong i dont wanna be right :-D

 

[bigjohn58]

Thanks for the posts Wulff-Man and Maurice. The ones on Kettle look more like an olive then the traditional Quill Gordons. I'm just going to tie up some larger BWOs. I'm not a fan of tying quill bodies and I can just throw a few in with my BWOs. I usually do not encounter them on any other stream I fish so they are not all that important to me except for on Kettle.

 

[flyman]

Maurice wrote:

bigjohn58 wrote:
So hopefully I don't get snubbed for that one previous post I made but I encountered a lot of quill gordons on the opening day. What does your quill gordong look like? The ones I encountered looked more like a larger light olive. I was thinking of tying up some light bodied bwos in a size 14 to cover the gordons or is there a better pattern to cover this hatch? The quill gordons I have don't look too much like the real thing in my opinion. What about a wet fly pattern?

John,

Below is a pic I took last year in April. The QG's should have mottled wings. (immitated with a wood duck flank feather wing and Grizzley hackle & Brown hackle) Smokey opaque wings on a lighter colored mayfly in a 14 could be a large BWO on Kettle. Or a Hendrickson, both present there. But I'd bet on the olive. Anyway, heres the pic.

Maurice,
Check out the Troutnut web site, I believe your QG is a March Brown, note the green eyes and the mottled wings. Quill Gordons can have dark dun colored wings like Hendersons, if mottled probably not too evident. QG spinners seem to show mottling on clear wings. We average anglers have a very hard time ID'ing flies. On Troutnut they get down to microscopic examination of the mayfly penis to ID species of the same genus and we have a hard time ID'ing flies of different genus. I just try to carry flies that cover the size and color spectrum of most naturals I may encounter and keep my fingers crossed.
Flyman

 

[flyman]

JackM wrote:
On one of the stream reports this paragraph appears:

"So what does this have to do with ffishing? Well, QG's are spectacular but rarely bring the trouts up. The reason is that they are one of the few mayflies to emerge underwater. So the way to catch trout during the QG emergence is to use a wet fly. Even the old reliables like Quigley Cripples and Klinkhammers won't do much for a QG hatch."

It doesn't ring true to me. I understand that they "emerge" underwater, however, when they reach the surface, they have as much reason, if not more, as any other emerging mayfly to ride the surface before becoming airborne. I have seen QGs ride the surface and some of the classic dry flies are QG duns. So, does the poster have some secret knowledge that no one else has or is he mistaken, mis-speaking, or what?

I would like to be educated because I have a bunch of dry flies that I can recycle the hooks from if they need to be dimantled. :-(

Jack,
Keep your dries. Just for the sake of discussion you and the writer you quote have points, merely different perspective. One day I fish the hatch and it's heavy, the number of duns bring the trout to the surface. A thorax dun works and appears to be the ticket. Three days later a light hatch the same pattern doesn't work, the trout are splashing at the surface. They are now concentrating on the emerger swimming to the surface, a hares ear works. Same hatch but the strength of it seems to determine how to fish it. Just observations from the stream, we are players in a game that the fish make the rules.
:-D
Flyman

 

[Wulff-Man]

It looks like the Quill Gordons, if that's what they are, that bigjohn saw on Kettle Creek are showing up other places also. I just saw this post on the Flyfishers Paradise web site:

"Yesterday on Spring Creek, a big, #14, mayfly landed on me. It looked very similar to a BWO, but was much bigger. Any ideas as to what it was?

Dark olive body. Blueish wings. but bigger. the wings were blothched (not sure if that is the correct term). The wings were similar color of BWO with lines and some darker areas."

 

[Wulff-Man]

Here are pictures of Epeorus Pleuralis / Quill Gordons on the Troutnut web site.... Quill Gordon
They do look something like large BWOs. They are a darker brownish color on the back, but a light olive underneath. At least the ones that Troutnut shows, which were from the Catskills. If you check out the discussion that follows the photos you will see that others also are confused by the light color. Troutnut comments that they are actually more amber but the lighting for the pictures makes them look lighter. Others are sure they should be a more mahogany color.

 

[Chaz]

One day a few years ago on Toms Creek in the Poconos, I ran into Don Douple filming insects. The insects of the day were Quill Gordons, all of which were struglling to stay upright and have their wings dry. I fished QG's that day with about the same success I usually have on a very tough stream.
Since then, I've fished over QG's on several occasions and even though I knew about the bugs hatching on the bottom and "flying" to the top I still caught fish using dry flies. 1 day in particular was very good, my fishing buddy and I fished over the hatch an spinner fall for several hours on a North Pocono Creek. One evening about 4 years ago I ran into QG's on Cedar Run in Tioga Cty. and we cleaned up again. So fish the flies the way they work, not by how they hatch.
Wulff Man, all of the QG's that I've captured have had a show of olive on the abdomen among a very gray body, the wings are gray and blotchy like a drake not a uniform gray like duns.