I guess that makes sense... The harder a place is to get to, the less traffic it will see.

Then the light ones were probably cahills, and the red one wasn't important, lol. What size do you tie for the slate drakes? They always look huge to me.

Greattt thread guys!

I have learnt alot. Thanks.

Sweet fish and a great story, Cold! You're encouraging everyone here, I think!

Just use head cement on the post right before you wind the hackle and whip finish. It's very durable that way.

Do you add the hackle while the head cement is still wet? I'm tying quite a few parachutes (they're looking better and better...and a fun tie to boot!), and that's the trickiest part for me, tying in that feather at the post. It keeps coming out before I can start to wrap it.

I turned him loose...

I dont see what you're saying about the head...how is it bigger than normal? Had I known, I may have kept him. Would any large fish up in a small stream be a similar situation? He certainly seemed healthy enough, and fought well.

ORIGINAL: Cold

Just use head cement on the post right before you wind the hackle and whip finish. It's very durable that way.

Do you add the hackle while the head cement is still wet? I'm tying quite a few parachutes (they're looking better and better...and a fun tie to boot!), and that's the trickiest part for me, tying in that feather at the post. It keeps coming out before I can start to wrap it.

Yup, that's how I do it. It cements the hackle stem in place so fish don't tear it apart so easy. As far as tying in the hackle, yeah, that can be tricky. The easiest way I've found is to make the stem a little long, hold it against the post from the bottom, then wrap around the stem and the post. You can then trim the excess stem. I hope that was clear. It's fairly easy to do but kinda tricky to describe.

Cold,
 Fishing in the rain can be frustrating. The trick is to keep your fly floating but it gets tough with wet hands and all. I keep a small towel stuffed down my waders. I have a couple of foam thoraxed sulphur spinners which helped slightly.
I'm a big baby so if the rain is heavy, I wait it out under cover.
Those cool days with light rain can lead to great fishing. That's when you need to get out on the water early. Last week, the afternoons by far out did the evenings in terms of top feeding trout. In fact, the last week and a half was the best dry fly fishing of the year, morning till night.
 
Big and tan are probably either March Browns(tan belly) or Gray Fox(pale yellow belly)
Those red mayflies could be Epeorus Vitreus or pink cahills. The female spinner has a reddish pink hue.
It's getting to that time of year when the fish seem to get smarter. Watch your drift. Sometimes that first bit of micro drag will put the fish into high alert.   Also, the fish rising in the riffles will be easier to game than those in flatter water.

when fishing dries in the rain i find it's best to drop the fly right on the riser this way he sees it land and doesn't have to look for it between rain drops. also skating and stopping a dry on a windy rainy day can be very productive.

cold,

I'm fairly new to fishing dries too, you overshoot your casts at all?  I find this the easiest way to get drag free drifts. After I overshoot, I pull some tippet back, and let it go.

Well, I was talking to the owner of my FLFS and he told me that the tiny browns I've been catching are indeed stocked fish. I believe it was a state effort to actually get some resident big browns in the stream, which gets regular stockings (so they're not displacing natives). I told him about the one I'd caught and he suggested that, since they've been doing this for 3-4 years, its either one of their small browns that took hold and has been growing in there for a while, or it's a traveler from upstream, where a club stocks the stream with big browns in late fall for more interesting winter fishing.

Last night I headed upstream rather than down, getting farther up that I've been before in this section. Found some nice water, and ended they day a surprisingly deep, slow pool. I managed to get a snag just in time for darkness to begin creeping in, a few spinners to begin flight at the tail of the pool, and for the trout in the pool to come up for some twilight feeding. By the time I managed to re-tippet and re-tie, I only had time for a few casts before it was time to go. There were two trout working the head of the pool, small ones by the sounds and splashes made, and a bigger one just downstream of me, slurping...something...off the surface without any sort of rhythm or consistency. He'd lie in wait for several minutes, only to rise three times in thirty seconds, then back to waiting.

I made a few casts to him with no results. The pool was too slow to get a good drift, and the angle i needed for casting was opposite the angle I wanted for stealth. Eventually, it was almost dark, and, with a long walk back to the car, I decided to make a last cast. Breaking all the dry fly conventions, I cast straight out across the slow pool, and just towed the #14 para-adams back toward me slowly, making tiny wakes in the glassy pool. All at once, a hump appeared behind the fly and then it disappeared in a splashy take, almost like a bass taking a jitterbug. For the second time in a week, I found myself attached to a large trout in a small stream in the dark.

After a fun battle on a 3 wt, I brought the 15" rainbow to the net, the calf body hair parachute sticking out of the side of his mouth.

From this and other fish, I'm starting to think that this little stream holds big fish in many of the deep pools, with the smaller ones occupying the fast water and the shallower pools. The bigger fish are the norm down lower, even as near as 1/4 mile, but up here, they only care to hold in deeper water.

Of course, as I turned to leave, I reached for my flashlight, suddenly remembering with crystal clarity, a mental image of transferring it into my day-pack for the camping trip the night before. So I spent the next half hour or so stumbling around in the darkness, working my way back to the car.

Still, managing to locate and raise another of the larger trout in that stream was worth it.

Now you're hooked. Good job on building on what was presented to you.

Thanks.

I AM hooked! I tried dries within two months of first touching a fly rod last summer and combined with learning to cast, read streams, and learn knots, it was all just too much. I fished them with only two refusals in terms of interest and due to my shoddy casting, I'd only get a half-dozen drifts with them before they were waterlogged. The whole experience kind of intimidated me, and I'd stayed away from dries ever since. Now, with the motions of casting committed to muscle memory, and stream-reading a more routine, if challenging, proposition, as well as tying my own flies...learning to fish dries is much more fun, now that I've got the fundamentals down as a foundation to build on.

When I stepped up on the road, a pick-up truck stopped and the guy said -- "What the hell are you doing? Don't you know its dark out?"

Heh...you should have paused for a moment, looked at the sky, then did your best imitation of "snapping out of it".

"Hmm?...OH! Wow! It IS dark! Geez, thanks buddy, I owe ya one!"

Then walk away muttering about how it really is dark.

I have one of those little LED lights that stays clipped to the inside of my vest for just such occassions.

I've got a LED light on an elastic headband that worked great with a baseball cap. I've since converted to a full brim hat, but the light works well enough just hung around my neck. I also have a red LED light that clips to a hat brim, but I havent tried it with this hat yet.

LLBean makes a baseball style cap with two headlights in the brim. it works slick and you don't feel the extra weight of the small watch battery in the back switch.

Sounds to me like the fish were feeding on some emergers or wigglers just under the surface.  Maybe some dead post-spawners.  I  would have tied on a soft hackle mosquito and let it drift about 6" down.  (Grease the leader really well with chapstick)  or a peacock soft hackle the same way. In about 14-16.
     If that failed I'd use an M-80.    No, not really just wanted to get a rise.