The famed hendrickson hatch is in full swing on my favorite river as I type this. Much of the allure about these aquatic insects is the surface action surrounding their emergence and subsequent spinnerfall. When the duns pop off the water in mid afternoon, sometimes you can be hard pressed to find an empty run for miles. On pleasant evenings, and occasionally mornings, crowds can be equally as bad for those seeking to cash in on spent spinners dropping down to the river. On many May mornings, however, when hendrickson nymphs are their most active, you can sometimes find yourself alone in the heads of pools and really hammer trout that are keyed in on these crawlers.
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A healthy brown taken on a hendrickson imitation (Photo credit: Todd Kuhrt).
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After a few outings where we had to really work for our fish, it was a nice change of pace to have hot and heavy action. On two consecutive mornings, anything resembling a hendrickson nymph stood no chance in the water. When your first three drifts of the morning come tight to fish, you know it’s on. Don’t get me wrong, a few thousand fresh trout stocked by CT DEEP certainly made things easier, but it felt good to weed out some holdovers from the fray. I was mostly fishing a two-fly rig, with pheasant tails nymphs as both my offerings. In one fast run though, I had to switch to a heavier anchor fly and chose the farthest looking thing from a hednrickson nymph, a pink Vladi worm. The pheasant tail dropper was responsible for over a dozen stockers and the Vladi took the only quality fish – it was a big food item and one that stood out from the rest.
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Photo credit: Aaron Swanson
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Photo credit: Aaron Swanson
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As good as the mornings were, I experienced two mediocre afternoon hatches and no real spinnerfalls. I later found out that I missed a good evening spinnerfall, but I was spent myself from a full day in the sun and skedaddled early. The afternoon hatches were short lived, but each day quality trout were looking up for quick stints. I was all alone in a pool on day one and stuck a large female brown trout on a hendrickson emerger pattern. She had my old school Fenwick 5-weight bitched and put up a fight that I wish others got to witness. I attempted to capture a self portrait with the brown before releasing her and could only laugh when I played back the photo afterwards - bummer! The dun hatch on day two was also rather uneventful, save for a 5-minute stretch where two nice trout were rising sporadically. I plucked one of them on the same emerger pattern from the day before and had another great tussle on the dry fly rod. It turned out to be a Survivor stocked last spring that was caught several river-miles downstream from where it was put in. The morning nymph action, afternoon dun hatches and evening spinnerfalls will still go on for a couple more weeks on the Farmington River, each day or two progressing slightly upstream. Between work and life, I may get one more crack at them before the 2011 hendrickson hatch is all said and done. It's been fun so far!
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Note the orange elastomer tag above this Survivor's left eye (Photo credit: Aaron Swanson).
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