Sunday Morning Trico’s
I went out for a few hours this morning to visit Grand and see what’s up. With the cold air there was a lot of fog which created some neat scenes…
I was hoping to catch some Trico action this morning and I was not disappointed. Early on there were fish sipping emerging insects. There were a number of midges flying around along with some trico’s, and some smaller caddis. I was trying out a new fly that I found while looking around online. It’s an emerging trico pattern but will work for midge emergers too given the small size. While not being positive what they were feeding on I was still confident that the fly would work.
The Fly is called the "Sweeper Trico Emerger" and is created by Marshall Porterfield:
(my approximation)
I have it on a #22 hook and is basically a Pheasant Tail nymph tied backwards on the hook with a white CDC feather extending from the rear. It’s not clear on the image but a small ribbing is included to get the nymph part submerged. I also used peacock herl for the main body.
The pattern proved quite successful. I picked up a pair of decent fish on it and lost a few others. Getting a good hookup is really important with these smaller hooks - something I’m working on. Sometimes the fish is hooked very thin and will pull off quickly. I’ve been finding that if I slow down my hookset when I get a rise it helps (something along the lines of saying out loud - "set the hook" and then doing it…) and has improved my hookups a lot.
Here is a trico dun from early in the morning - olive body with a dark top:
I covered a lot of water once the emerging insects slowed down hunting for the clouds of trico spinners. The flies will congregate on sections of fast water so getting to the riffles is important.
I grabbed one of the spinners from the air (a tough job actually)
Here is one of the patterns 
I use for trico’s
I also really like the pattern Rob O’Reilly posted in his section - its a solid performer and stays on top well.
Over the course of the morning the wind picked up quite a lot and made it quite difficult for the trico’s to stay over the water. They would be blown away in clouds quite frequently. It also made the water very choppy and difficult to detect rising fish. I ended up heading to some of the moving water and swinging streamers through for the rest of the morning. Didn’t see any big spinner fall. I imagine it would have been quite good if the wind was calmer - but I guess I can only dream about what could have happened 
This is certainly a nice time to be on the water - the mornings are pretty and the air is cool…
Hope everyone had a great weekend!
DanJ
