Mayfly Confusion

Finally pulled myself away from the ATW's, and over to what I like to call the gem and was graced by some nice adults rising in a few stretches.  There was an abundance of flies, almost a buffet, and it made for some difficult fishing.

March Browns were popping off, but received no attention



Caddis, of course, were hatching... 3 different species, brown, black, and green... I brought 3 to the surface w. Copebuggers infamous sparse caddis patterns, but no hook jabs.  We were bombing some casts, hook-sets were rather difficult.



The cahills and sulphurs really started bringing up fish at dark



Fish, however, were taking emergers, not duns.  Hopefully that doesn't last for long.  This is the pattern I had the most luck with today.  Bought from Orvis, hence the photo, though I told Copebugger to tie some up.  Not sure if some of my misses came from the upside down hook, as the fish were smashing it like a dry. 



And finally, a "gem" brown



Was weird today, though green drakes aren't hatching yet, we missed a few fish on some drake patterns... dumb fish

Will be returning tomorrow, hopefully with better pics.

it's great to hit the streams at the right time and be rewarded.
nice job

Nice pics.

I ran into the same last night during the sulphur on the lj. The fish were mainly taking emergers most of the night. The rises looked just as it would if the fish were on duns. Sometimes there's not much difference between the two rises.

I take the guesswork out of it by fishing a dun with an emerger dropped behind about a foot apart.

The Barr emerger is one of my new favorites, and it only takes seconds to tie. Otherwise, for emergers I use sparkle duns, and a cdc pattern similar to what dano describe except I use a antron shuck instead of the flank feather.