I’m sure you’ve seen videos of giant New Zealand brown trout blowing up a dry fly. The only fish for a hundred yards is stalked, observed, and chased with tactical precision. When everything goes right, the water explodes with the most furious salmonid intensity,
But again, I’m sure you’ve seen videos of this happening. You probably haven’t been there. Me either.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some exciting dry fly seasons on our local trout streams. Every once in a while, the trout around you and me decide against their better judgment to chase floating insects. Most of their food is tumbling helplessly right towards them. But trout, being magnanimous in nature, will throw fly fishers a bone every once in a while and sip the surface. This makes us very happy.
Only in recent years have fly fishers truly embraced tactics other than the dry fly. Large streamers satiate the most attention-deficient angler. Nymphs… well, they work. And western man is quite pragmatic in even his recreational pursuits.
Still, irrespective of all fly tying and social media trends, contrary to the standard operating procedure of the trout, the fly fisher wants to fish dry flies. Thankfully there are other fish in the sea. And the stream. And the pond. Many of which are significantly more agreeable than trout.
Consider the bass. In all its varieties, the bass has a propensity to look up. Largemouth bass eat frogs, mice, ducklings, and novelty lures that look like PBR cans. Smallmouth bass seem to have some sort of Hatfield-McCoy relationship with dragonflies; even jumping feet out of the water to avenge some ancient feud. Smaller species, like the rock bass, live with the singular purpose of punishing anything that lands on the water’s surface.
If the itch involves a fly floating along, and scratching it necessitates a fish engaging said fly with its mouth, there are plenty of options that check both boxes. Fallfish and whitefish, for example. They’re not much to look at. But therein lies the real treasure. Their weird distended mouths are certainly not made for rising to insects above them. Yet they do it. And with gusto. They’re the real heroes.
Of course, no conversation about rising fish would be complete without mentioning the most ubiquitous, the most munificent, the most dry-fly-opportunistic of all finned creatures. The Panfish. Whom among us hasn’t smiled as a thick-bodied bluegill inhaled a foam-bodied bug? Never has an afternoon of sunfish let anyone down. Furthermore, it doesn’t cost much. No long travel. No ibuprofen-fueled problem solving. Just you, a fly, some floatant, and willing allies.
I love trout. But sometimes I need to dial things back quite a bit. Drifting a puffy attractor across a warmwater pool is dry fly fishing. Even watching it meander downstream is cathartic. Whoever wants to join in on the fun is fine with me.