They appear magically, like presents under a Christmas tree when you were
seven years old. One morning in late May, you wade into the stream and behold!
Stonefly husks cling to every exposed rock and boulder. Suddenly, each run,
tailout, and slot beckons like an all-you-can-eat buffet. And you are freaking
hungry.
Here in the northeast, stoneflies are not nearly as celebrated as the famous
salmonfly hatch on western rivers. Yet fast dry fly fishing awaits those
anglers ready to adapt. Forget graceful, 70-foot casts, lovely drag-free
floats, and trout rising with a Bach Sonata playing in the background. Time to
knot on some eight-pound Maxima and splatter down big, hairy bugs with
graceless hauls. This is trout fishing to Motörhead.
Thankfully, stoneflies do not prompt Latinizing the way mayflies do. I lump
all my springtime stones together as either golden, black, or brown and leave
it at that. Someone who sidles up to you at a bar and mentions they are
eagerly awaiting the emergence of
Acroneuria lycorias
should probably be avoided. On the other hand, if the guy on the next stool
over tells you he just saw a crapload of goldens, immediately ply him with
alcohol and lots of it.
Except for the tiny early black stoneflies you sometimes see motor-boating
across creeks during winter thaws, most fishable eastern stonefly hatches
occur later in the spring. On my home waters in the Catskills in southern New
York, which includes world-class rivers like the Upper Delaware, Beaverkill,
and Neversink, I don’t expect to see them in any numbers until just before
Memorial Day, with mid-June being about peak. And bulk numbers are what you
are looking for. There’s something about when these bugs seasonally erupt that
cause trout to suddenly lock in like crocodiles on the wildebeest migration.
Everything from six inch brookies on tiny mountain tributaries to 20-inch
brownies in the big Delaware have at it.
But don’t look for traditional blanket hatches either. Though you may see
staggering numbers of nymphal husks and newly hatched adults crawling along
the shore, eastern stoneflies rarely hit the water all at once. It’s mostly
one here, one there. Come evening, you may see scatterings of egg-layers
crash-landing in riffles, but that’s about as abundant as they get. The one
exception is on a dry, windy day right after a mass emergence. Then, recently
hatched adults can pour off streamside vegetation by the hundreds before their
wings fully dry, and the river will boil with rising fish. But the combination
of those perfect conditions happens about once every other leap year. If you
stumble onto it though, feel free to call or text me. Please.
For flies, traditional Stimulators, Sofa Pillows and their elegant ilk in
sizes ten to as large as six certainly work, but my two favorites look more
like something that splattered on your windshield. One is something I call a
Hot Mess. I tie it on a size eight 2XL dry fly hook with a body of either
olive or natural snowshoe hair dubbing. Then I lock in a gob of stacked deer
hair and pull it back to form a bullet head. But the next step is crucial: I
literally crumple the fly in my hand like a scrap of paper you're about to
toss in the garbage. This splays, folds, and kinks the hair-wing into… well,
if not a hot mess, than a hairy one. The other fly is a Hair-Wing Spider tied
using opposing clumps of either deer or cow elk body hair spun on a
short-shanked light wire scud hook in size 12. Mash it together with your
fingers so the hairs stick upright almost like wound hackle. Trim some – but
not all – of the more egregious butt hairs. When you are done, it looks like
something you might see on the barber shop floor after a busy Saturday. Tied
correctly, both patterns don’t land on the water as much as flop. And when
they do, you twitch, water throws, a trout leaps.
Speaking of twitches, my own rule is to cast once or maybe twice and let the
fly dead drift. If nothing takes, I cast again but check the rod high. When
the fly lands (flops) I give it action so it jumps and daps in the current
just like a floundering stonefly. I can’t tell you how many times that final
quiver provokes a vicious take. If I can position myself to skip the bug
upstream instead of down, so much the better. For some reason, trout prefer
their stones moving against the current, not with it.
Don’t wait for risers to show either. Fish the water. I like rocky riffles, or
swift, narrow slots against boulders. On smaller streams, tailouts between
plunge pools – particularly if they gather a few bubble lines – are big
medicine.
And dammit, cast. A lot. Put the fly here. Then over there. Twitch it in front
of that boulder. Then next to that one. Use drag to your advantage. Think like
a stonefly. Make that Hot Mess or Spider dance. You are looking for a trout
that seems to be waiting its whole life to crush that fly. And when it does,
set the hook and try not to air guitar The Ace of Spades with your
five weight.