Caterpillars!

The story of a hatch on the weekend of April 6/7, 2003

This weekend while strolling around my old college campus I noticed something that got my fishing excitement up. It's that time of year when in every tree and bush it seems caterpillars are coming out of the woodworks... and I know from previous outings that this includes the trees growing over the creeks and rivers!

Sunday I took my little foam flies out to the South San Gabriel. These flies are not much more than very thin strips of foam tied on down the length of the hook and a little bit of dubbing wrapped with them. The foam of choice this weekend was a pale green. Why? Because there's a caterpillar that hatches here that's about 1/2 to 1 inch long. It munches for a while and then suspends itself from the branch down on a silk line. Well... sounds a lot like what I have going on at the end of my fly rod!

That caterpillar will repel down to the surface of the water and ski on the surface... not willing to let go of its line and not able to resist the current to climb back up. *enter the JAWS theme* With a usually noisy splash the caterpillar disappears.

There are hundreds of these things dangling from branches and the fish below have their eyes on them. As long as you're stealthy about it, you can stand right next to one of these branches and simply extend your fly rod over with no line out except for the leader/tippet and fly hanging down to the water surface. No need to worry about getting the drift right or watching your backcast... it's just a matter of sitting there skating the fly on top of the water until the fishes see it.

I caught 40+ fish Sunday evening in little more than 3 hours with one fly. There are many ways to tie the fly and you don't have to match the hatch all that closely to get strikes. But next time you're out, take a San Juan worm or a simple strip of foam and try this technique. Talk about getting intimate with the fish... you're catching them within 6 feet from where you're standing!