Good news about Green Drakes!

The Fly Fishers Place

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So….On the Metolius River we have good news to share on the Green Drake front! Hatches are spread out from Canyon Creek to Candle Creek and seem to favor late day emergence, so don’t give up at 4, wait until at least 5:30. You’ll want nymphs pre hatch, emergers and duns during the hatch and a spent wing for the end of the hatch crippled duns, or if you are lucky enough to run into a drake spinner fall. If you want to bet on the odds of the drake spinners, be on the water very early in the morning. And hey, if you don’t see drake spinners you can nymph, or streamer fish if the fish are not eating on the surface. 
The other 2 mayflies that were providing some good sessions of dry fly fishing this past week are PMD’s and Blue Wing Olives. Having emergers and cripples of both will be a smart way to add flies to the box that will work on the Met. 
I was driving the lake for a guide trip with one of my friends and good old metolius anglers Dr George, and we were having a discussion about emergers, and I added how important cripples are, but that without the right leader none of it made a difference. 
On a small dry fly presentation in a tricky place like the Metolius you will get a better drift on a thin diameter, longer leader like a Trout Hunter Finesse or Rio Suppleflex. Compare these leader diameters from the butt section to the mid section to a traditional Powerflex type leader and you will see 2 things in a side by side comparison. The butt dimmest is way thinner, and the mid section is longer and thinner and the tippet section is longer too. From there, I also add more nylon tippet to it to achieve the greatest possibility of a drag free drift! A thick butted leader is already introducing drag to the drift. Thin to win. (I’m not talking about my waistline)
When fishing drakes a 12′ 5x is a good leader, and you can build off that base by adding 3 or 4 feet of 6x nylon tippet for the smaller hatches. If you get freaked out by that much leader than get the 12′ 6x and just add tippet again after a few fly changes and build up to getting used to casting a long leader. Timing, loop control from your arc and plane and it’s easy. 
There are some big bull trout around which makes me wonder if some lake run fish are already coming up? 
Grab the 8 wt and some articulated streamers and go. 
And on the nymph side, the usual suspects with golden stones, perdigons, caddis pupa (tan #14-16) and green drake nymphs, soft hackle PT, cdc hares ear, micro mayfly and frenchie’s all come to my mind as I sit here dreaming about the river and what I’d tie on today if I wasn’t in the shop.

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