A quick look at late summer and the seasonal fly box

These days we're having now, this little tweener season that I call late summer, is one of my favorite times. The heat of summer - and hopefully the fires and their shrouds of smoke - are winding down. Days are getting noticeably shorter and the nights are noticeably cooler. The kids are getting their last lick of vacation in before the start of school.

It's 4H animal projects and county fair time, sweet corn fresh from somebody's garden or maybe a roadside stand time, and time to think about getting some firewood in when the woods are damp enough to keep the fire danger down.

The days are warm enough to make it easy and pleasant to be outdoors.

It's archery season and sighting in the rifle time. After Labor Day, when the vacationers from other places return to their homes, it's a time when many of us enjoy the return of a special sense of unhurried quietude with almost a sense of relief. The time has come, and we can feel it when our towns, roads and fishing accesses are less crowded, when we again have our big Montana backyard all to ourselves.

During the years I had my fly shop in Hamilton I'd look forward to the evenings after the holiday weekend when I could close the shop and drive just a few miles to go fishing, sometimes by myself or in the unexpected company of somebody I likely knew.

If I was willing to hoof it a little ways, there was solitude.

The fishing opportunities could vary. Sometimes there'd be a flurry of caddisflies, dull drab grayish brown ones in about a #14 that looked like little moths. When they were there the fish smacked them with reckless abandon. And just as often you'd see only a few adults on the surface, but there'd be boils or splashes from the fish.

On those evenings you could go broke fishing a caddis dry. A plain caddis emerger or soft hackle with a green body, fished on a short, pull-pause retrieve would open the door to strikes on virtually every cast.

It's still true today. The trout haven't changed their behavior. Carry a dry #14 and wet #14 caddis imitation for those evenings when the caddisflies are active.

Another possibility is that you might see some small - I mean really small - black flies in the air and virtually no rises. This might happen around dark. You're probably seeing small adult tricos, the precursors to the next morning's trico activity.

The fish are likely taking the emerging nymphs underneath, if anything. Tie on a fairly longish (30" or so) 5X tippet and to that attach your smallest black mayfly nymph, #18 at the largest. My favorite is to tie my own on a short-shank #18 dry fly hook, which yields the size fly you'd ordinarily find on a #20 or #22 hook, but with a bigger gape and more hooking power.

My fly has a longish hackle fiber tail, about 3X body length, and a peacock herl or dubbed black thorax or biggish head up front. The rest is black thread.

Fish it on a pull-pause retrieve that keeps just enough tension on the line to detect a strike, or just swing it gently through the currents where fish might hold. Sounds too simple to be a secret weapon, but at times it is.

Morning fishing might begin with the late-in-life form of those little bugs that hatched the night before, the so-called trico spinners. Number 20 is probably the most useful size but bracket it with sparse #18s and #22s.

The daytime fishing might switch to #8 hoppers, a welcome relief from tracking a near-invisible #22 on the water. Hopper-dropper rigs with generic food-form nymphs underneath can score well.

On gray, rainy days we might see some dark-winged little olive-bodied mayflies, the blue winged olives. You can cover those with a #18 BWO Parachute for openers, and get more technical from there.

And my favorite hatch this time of year is the hecuba, or fall drake. They're a full size #10, but if you don't find them in that size, a #12 will do. These flies hatch through the middle of the day and you don't often see many of them, just one here and there.

The good news is that the ones you see will likely get eaten. Fish accordingly.