Blizzard Hatch

I spent this past Saturday floating the Henry's Fork from Warm River to Ashton with good friend and TIF author extraordinaire John Holland. We had received some good reports from some guides over there a few days before, but were not prepared for what we found. We heard consistent reports of midges, BWO's and the possibility of a few caddis. When we put on the river at about 11 am, we did see all of the above with just a few caddis fluttering around. The fishing was dead until about 1:30 pm when a literal "wall" of caddisflies erupted, moving upriver. I don't know if I've ever seen a hatch as thick as this one turned out to be. John agreed. For about two hours, the river, the boat and our bodies were layered in caddisflies. We stopped on a great looking run where there were some nice fish feeding on top. As we took a closer look on foot, we saw dozens of nice browns and rainbows stacked in, feeding voraciously. Since we were on the PhD of all trout streams, we carefully tried to match the hatch exactly. Unfortunately, there was so much food on the water, the chances of any of these fish grabbing our fly was very small. John decided to put on a large royal stimulator just for fun (and ease of sight). My first thought was, "no way, we are on the Henry's Fork, and these fish are smarter than that". Almost immediately, John hooked and landed a big rainbow. And then another, and another after that. I quickly grabbed one of my stonefly boxes, looking furiously for a royal stimulator. Before I could find one, John threw one to me and I was almost instantly hooking fish as well. After awhile, we realized that these fish were taking the stimulator as a "caddis cluster". When the hatch finally ended (due to a heavy rainstorm), they shut down on the stimulator and started looking at single caddis patterns. It was a great learning experience; think outside the box. The pictures attached don't do a great justice of just how thick the hatch was. Click on each photo in order to enlarge and see the bugs. As of this morning, I am still finding caddisflies in my gear bag, camera back, laundry and truck. More soon!