The Brown Drake Spinner
The Brown Drake is a true ephemera. You will only meet a Brown Drake Spinner Fall on two to three nights in early June. We were lucky this year. I have chased the Brown Drake Spinner on Big Pine Creek for many years in the 1980's. I only got lucky three times including one time during mid-day before a mighty storm. You see, Brown Drake duns hatch sporadically in the afternoon and evening. The duns are of little importance as they get airborne almost immediately. Fishing a #10 2XL nymph during the day and evening will catch trout as they are focused on this prolific food source. That explains why Jonny Ranger netted 21 trout on Wednesday using a #10 Hare's Ear Nymph. The large spinners will gather in the late evening over the water. They may get as low as head high. Then without any explanation, they will return to the trees and later fall in the wee hours of the night when you are asleep. This year on the First Fork, they fell on three nights around 9 PM! On two of the nights, they fell through an incredible caddis flight. The number of bugs can not be explained. Best estimate is 100 billion caddis per minute flying at break-neck speed up the creek. This went on for nearly an hour. Bowhunter thought that the Brown Drakes were emerging because he saw "duns" floating with upright wings. They were in fact spinners, not quite yet spent. The spinners have clear, well marked wings with very long tails. They were spinners and the trout took as many as they could.
RBF Gum Wrapper
RBF's Gum Wrapper proved to be very effective. The Brown Drake version is tied with two hanks of white poly yarn and 10-12 strands of Micro Silver Crystal Flash for wings and coc de leon fibers for tails. Bowhunter and the Chief enjoyed great fishing Sunday night as the spinner fall was not as dense as previous nights, giving the trout a better chance of finding our flies. Often times, the morning after a Brown Drake Spinner Fall can produce good fishing.
Nice wild brown taken during the morning hours with a RBF Gum Wrapper
3 comments:
Great for you guys. I've yet to see the spinners actually hit the water but have been on the Penns many times when they've come mighty close. Oh so disappointing when they mysteriously disappear.
I still think I saw duns earlier in the week. They had a much darker wing than what we saw Sunday.
The two-time Prestigious Chief's Award Winner is correct. Duns were spotted on the the First Fork waters earlier in the week.
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