Dry Fly Headaches

Approaching the river Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours fluff chuckin' I was greeted by a river that had plenty of fish rising, so there was great anticipation to get into the water.

My mind was made the minute I saw the rising fish that today was going to be a dry fly day!!

Settling into the river everything seemed perfect...fish still rising, upstream breeze, warm air temperature, yes this was all lined up for a memorable day.

When I was all set to go a reasonable fish rose about 15 yards in front of me, a couple of false casts later and my olive klinkhamer was on its nose. I tensed, ready for the instant take that normally follows...nothing!

After 4 or 5 attempts I'd put the fish down without him even acknowledging there was anything worth bothering with.

After many fly changes this outcome kept repeating itself with frustrating regularity and no matter what fly I tried (and I was well into double figures) they just weren't interested in anything I had to offer.

At the end I'd managed to take a few on dries but with no consistency...all fish taking different flies. A change to the nymph at the very end saw 2 fish come to hand very quickly.

At the beginning everything was screaming dry flies at me but in hindsight my day would surely have produced more fish on the nymph, I suppose on reflection it was a lesson learned. The flies coming of the water during the afternoon didn't really amount to much... a few Olives and Yellow Mays but no real hatch of upwing flies. There was however billions of midges skimming the surface and this left me with the conclusion that these were the prime reason for the fish activity and they were so preoccupied that nothing else would really do.

My next task is to try and come up with the imitation that will do the job when I encounter this again, Unfortunately I feel this may be a life long quest.