East Hickory Creek DHALO, Forest Co, 5-21-2024

[Prospector]

Time Fished: 715pm - 855pm

Weather Conditions: Sunny, 75 degrees

Water Conditions: Decent flow but on the low side, Green but clear, Water Temp 66 degrees. Need a shot of rain to drive water temp down.

Insects: I saw at least a 20 coffin flies, there were mayflies in different sizes (#12,#16, #20), I saw a lot of cream midges, the spinner fall was condensed into about 20 minutes

The one thing that stood out was the “punkies” were terrible. It was not bad when you were casting but as soon as you tried to tie a fly on you were mobbed.

There were only a handful of rises to start with so I tied on a streamer (a real skinny one). I had about 6-7 pursue the streamer but none actually grabbed it. I tried a thicker streamer but nothing chased it.

I had tied 5 flies before I left camp but that insect apparently wasn’t on the water this trip. I didn’t get many looks at that fly. After seeing the Green Drakes I put on a fairly large Green Drake dun but no takes. I also tried 3 different spinners, a midge and a couple mayflies.

I had 3 strikes, landed a small brown and lost 2 other trout.

Rises increased as the night wore on.

 

[Prospector]

East Hickory Creek DHALO, Forest Co, 5-22-2024

Time Fished: 1030am - 115pm

Weather Conditions: Started out Sunny about 72 degrees, the last 45 min it became overcast with distant thunder. Eventually the rain came and the thunder ultimately send me back to camp.

Water Conditions: Low and clear; water temp was 65 degrees

Insects: At least 6 green drakes hatched. I also saw large mayflies that were March Brown size and color. I’m assuming that’s what they were. There were some smaller mayflies too. The hatching ramped up as the clouds rolled in

As I usually do in this stream, I started out with a few streamers. The tail end of the pool was better than the top. More active fish there. Interestingly, there was a school of minnows trapped at the lower end of the pool. A trout or a few trout were terrorizing that school. About 20-30 times they were jumping out of the water in unison. For whatever reason they stayed tucked just above the riffle. I was able get a brown and missed one on a streamer my buddy gave me to try.

After about 20 minutes the streamer experiment was done. Now I went through a series of dry fly changes to see if Flies that didn’t work: small rusty body mayfly (expected spinners in this color last night). caterpillar (used it since some trout were rising under overhead limbs), #16 rusty spinner. The one fly that caught a brown was a sz 16 tan Caddis.

As the thunder got closer I tried a few things to induce strikes like tying on a nymph, adding a heavy split shot, casting it to the far bank, letting it sink and try to simulate a hatching insect by quickly pulling to the surface but today this did not work (as it had before). I then tried a muddler minnow as the storm was imminent (to no avail).

So 2 trout. These guys got a lot smarter in about a month.

 

[Prospector]

East Hickory Creek DHALO, Forest Co, 5-30-2024

Time Fished: 730pm - 915pm

Weather: Sunny but the valley was already in shade. 56 degrees at 730pm and 50 degrees at 915pm

Water Conditions: Clear, lower flow, water temp 54 degrees

Insects: Green Drake Spinners and 3 different small mayfly spinners

Before I got to the DHALO, I was driving along Beaver Run (a trib of East Hickory Creek) and the road was filled with coffin flies (Green Drake). When I stopped to catch a few, I also saw a lot of white midges and smaller mayfly spinners.

Once I got to the DHALO I quickly tied on a coffin fly imitation (aka green drake spinner) since many were in the air. The coffin fly was the best producer of the night but I had to try it a few different times. Ultimately I changed flies because there was more than one fly and different fish keyed on different flies.

I used a sz 12 coffin fly (twice), a sz 16 spent wing rusty spinner, a sz 16 upright wing rusty spinner, a sz 12 upright wing rusty spinner and I also tried a sz 14 tan body compardun to imitate an upright wing spinner and tan body was clear despite not catching one.

It was a pretty clear script. The fish were rising when I arrived. Splashly rises were to the drakes since they have a tendency to land for a second and get airborne again. Some were sipping. 5 or 6 insects were present.

I caught 7 browns. Not sure if the warm Memorial Day temps caused the rainbows look for cooler water.

Photos of Green Drake Spinners (Coffin Fly)

 

[Prospector]

Some additional insect photos from 5-30-2024. I caught 3 more distinct insects and distinct sizes. There probably were more insects than I was able to capture.