Boise River, ID

Outing Information

Fish Caught

Rainbow Trout

Weather

Other Patterns Tried

• #14 Tan Elk Hair Caddis
• #18 Adams
• #14 Pale Yellow CDC Comparadun

Fishing Partners

No fishing partners were saved with this outing.

Waypoints

No waypoints were saved with this outing.

Notes

I went to the Boise River last night to a spot in town that looked pretty solid before when I was scouting places on my bike. I got there about an hour before sundown and nothing was rising so I put on a bullethead hopper and a small dropper and got no love nymphing so I switched to a rubber leg copper john and actually caught a nice 8" rainbow. I nymphed and nymphed and got nothing else.

As it was getting dark, mostly smaller fish (I think) started making splashy rises so I switched over to a #14 elk hair caddis and a #18 adams as general search patterns since I didn't know what the trout were hitting. Since they were splashier rises I figured they were probably caddis and thought I would do okay on the elk hair. Nope. I changed the dropper to a gray emergent sparkle pupa - caught 1 8" fish. A #14 CDC PMD dun - nope. And other small dries - nope. One awesome thing was I was standing in about 1 1/2' of water, casting down and across just a few feet to occasionally-rising fish, when a very nice rainbow porpoised. Wow. That fish was easy 14", if not 16-18". So that got me real excited that I wasn't just fishing for small fish.

Anyway, I couldn't catch anything. I switched to a big cone head thing when it was dark and didn't catch anything. Then the evening's epiphany occurred.....

In the dark, I turned on my headlamp and started looking at the water surface. The surface was absolutely full of the ginger shucks of hatched caddis. I got so lucky as to even capture a few caddis cripples. And there were also lots of smaller PMD cripples on the water. I now think I see what all the fish were feeding on - the emerging pupae. First, I think my emergent sparkle pupae were the wrong colors. Second, I was rereading a Fly Fisherman article last week about the 3 major caddisflies that constitute way over half of the caddisfly population on almost every river (cinnamon caddis, smaller olive caddis, and the grannom). In that article they gave props to Jesus for all his work on Caddisflies. For emerging pupae, they also mentioned Jesus' emergent sparkle pupa and said it works better in faster water and not nearly as well in slower water. For that, they listed a couple pattern recipes. I was fishing in a bit slower water last night so I tied up a few of their offered patterns in colors that match the couple specimen I captured and brought home. I also reread the chapter in Caddisflies dealing with how to fish emerging pupae. Hopefully no one's in that spot tonight so I can return to try a few new ideas. This will kick ass if I can get into some decent in-town trout fishing.

I want to change my nymphing when I first get there to a deep sparkle pupa more along the colors of the adults I found last night, since they should be getting restless an hour or two before the major hatch and start showing up in the drift more. I also want to do some seining to see what the pupae look like, and see what other nymphs are in the water.

Hatch: #18 PMDs; #14/#16 light olive/light brown caddis