I took a much needed fly fishing break from work and headed out to the Grand river for all of Wednesday.

Finally we had a nice hot day and I was hoping that would transfer into a big-bug day (numbers-wise). While the large numbers I hoped for didn’t appear, there were still enough to steadily bring fish up to the surface.

I started the morning off at an upper section of the Grand River. Soon into the morning the fish keyed in on the caddis that were coming up. I’m going to let the pics give most of the info as - once again - its late and I’m too tired to type up a storm

Here are a few caddis shots to give you some profiles to work off when tying… I recently starting experimenting with a new caddis imitation. The main idea is to use a dun CDC wrapped sparsely around the hook like a hackle. When it lands on the water it lays in the film like the spent caddis as shown on the inset in this photo:

Here’s another shot detailing the bottom part of the caddis… Note the slightly green abdomen. That’s something I’m incorporating in my flies…

There were also a fair number of black caddis flying around (more so later in the afternoon/evening)… These guys are hard to spot but are very apparent when you find them in a group. Here you can see them dancing around:

Here’s a close-up of a Black caddis

I managed a few nice fish in the morning along with a number of smaller guys… It was great having consistent surface action again. Here’s a shot of one of the nicer ones in the morning

For the afternoon I spent the time around the Trestle area. Starting around 2 in the afternoon there was a light cahill hatch. The fish were coming up regularly for these guys and it made for a few fun hours. Lots of stockers!
Here’s a cahill from the afternoon

The evening was good. As I mentioned before I was hoping that the warm weather would create a large caddis hatch but that didn’t happen. There was steady caddis action though so that was good. Fish were coming up with moderate frequency - enough to home in on them and land a few nice ones. I like summer evening fishing, it is really relaxed and has a nice feel to it. I think I like finishing off the day on the water…

Oh yeah, I grabbed some shots of what appear to be March Browns… I’m not 100% on this but the little research I did in identifying them shows this…

Here’s a spent mayfly I found in the morning:

This was one of the guys taking off in the evening:

Same guy, different angle - I thought this photo looked interesting so I figured I’d share it… reminds me of the assault gunboats from star wars (the 3-wing ones)

Hope you all enjoy your Canada day weekend… I’m heading up to Haliburton for some specs and Smallies hopefully…

If you’re out on the grand - make sure you have your caddis stocked up… #18’s were the most common size I used…

DanJ

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2004 at 9:26 pm by DanJ and is filed under Canada Fly Fishing Reports. You can leave a response.