Two big cutthroat finned just below the surface, snacking on a buffet of nymphs and emergers with the same carefree attitude of kids riding bikes down to the local ice cream shop. I don’t know if the cutthroat were actually giddy, but they ate in a way that convinces anglers fish have more sentience than they’re given credit for.
The fish were picking their food seemingly at random, although I’m sure there was a method to their madness. I watched for the better part of ten minutes, hoping to find the pattern, but it proved elusive. Between all the bouncing caddis, gliding pale-morning duns, and clusters of midges, the fish didn’t have a shortage of meals to pick from.
Caddis outnumbered the other bugs by two-to-one, though, so I rigged up an elk-hair on top, with an emerger tied on about 18 inches below. I even sized down to 5x tippet because the water was low and clear.
The biggest of the fish was tucked on the far side of the pool, beneath a tangle of branches, and just off the main seam. By some struck of luck, my first cast tucked perfectly under the branches, landed softly, and drifted right into that fish’s kitchen.
He rose and followed my flies, turning until he was staring right at me. I know it’s silly to think it, but I’m almost certain we locked eyes for a second. And in that moment, the fish knew the con, and opted not to play. He swam back to his lie and gulped another adult caddis before my flies finished their drift. A subtle, but distinct, flipping of the bird if ever there was one.
The other fish in that pool followed suit. They’d rise, see me, and scurry back to their lies. I was in a tough position because there wasn’t anywhere else I could stand in order to get the right drift. Eventually, I gave up and started fishing the riffles ahead of the pool. I quickly caught two fish, both of whom eagerly ate the emerger subsurface. They were thick, healthy fish, and ate with that kind of confidence only a cutthroat can muster.
As I moved up the river, the mayflies and midges petered out, until the hatch was almost entirely caddisflies. They were smaller than the imitation I had on, and slightly lighter. Usually, I don’t worry too much about matching color, but with these fish, in crystal-clear water, I wondered if that was part of the reason I’d been refused in that pool. Sure, the fish had seen me, but I was crouched low, kept my movements to a minimum, and actively trying to look non-threatening. Was it really my fault?
On a whim, I swapped out the caddis emerger for an unweighted pheasant tail nymph. The caddis emerger was bright green, with emerald wire ribbing, a glass bead, and an elk-hair wing to give it some movement at the end of a drift. I hadn’t sampled the water to see what color the caddis pupae were, but based on the adults, I thought maybe my color was off.
That was the key, as it turned out. For the rest of the evening, the fish ate that pheasant tail almost exclusively. I swung it through riffles, dead-drifted it in pools, and twitched it in runs. The elk-hair was ignored, functioning as a dressed-up indicator for the emerger that was clearly the big-ticket meal item the fish wanted.
Caddis hatches are unique in that seeing a bunch of adults on the water doesn’t mean the fish are actually eating them. Often, those adults have been hanging out in streamside vegetation for weeks, waiting to migrate back to the water to lay their eggs. And since the adults are so flighty, the trout key in on the emerging pupa, because they can’t escape as easily as a winged adult can.
This is theory that most anglers are familiar with, and we’ve probably rehearsed it many times on the water. But watching it happen — fish ignoring adults for the emergers — has a way of driving the point home that you can’t get in a book or magazine article.
The constant, though, is that trout love caddis. They go nuts for ’em. And on this night, with cutthroat happily eating, I was just stoked to get to see it all in action.