Now is perfect time to learn fly fishing in Maine

Saturday, June 17, 2006

As soon as the present deluge of water subsides, fly-fishing will get as good as it ever does in Maine. Now might be the time for folks interested in this fascinating hobby to learn it, and the most optimistic and honest comment that I can make about such a noble plan is this: Fly fishing is far easier to learn and less expensive than many newbies might realize.

What skills do folks need to know before they head onto the water?

I have definitive answers to this simple question, based on three decades of teaching the sport. In April 1974, I taught my first fly-fishing school at L.L. Bean and in the 32-year period since, have worked with at least 2,000 people. This experience gives me a solid handle on what seminar participants want to learn.

First, proper casting techniques interest folks more than anything else, and then, knot tying runs second. A good instructor, either a professional or an informal one such as a friend or relative, can teach the basics for both skills in little time, and then, novice fly rodders typically turn their efforts to a third priority in the sport -- fly selection. Without a doubt, this last one takes a lifelong commitment to master, but the path to learning is a joy.

Fly selection can be broken into two categories: 1) A general, commonsense approach and 2) scientific system.

With the proper steps, the first one allows beginners to hit the ground running, and the only requirement for success begins with astute observation, starting with deciding what forage interest fish. Four steps help.

1) If fish are rising, fly fishers can sneak close enough to determine which insect has drawn trout to the surface and catch the bug for close scrutiny. Then, fly rodders must match the imitation to the natural in size, silhouette and color. (More on matching the colors in a moment.)

2) If no fish rise, hold an entomology net in the water and seine larvae floating downstream. Whichever bug is the most prevalent or largest might be the one to match in size, silhouette and color.

3) On ponds and lakes, find dead baitfish or drowned bugs on the surface and match a fly to the most numerous ones. During smelt spawning, it's common to find smelts on the surface. On rivers, look at bugs in the air, in spider webs, under leaves on shore-side shrubs, etc.

4) If all else fails, then catch a dumb fish and either kill it or extract the food from the stomach via a pump. I seldom kill fish, though, and dislike using stomach pumps. (One of the first three suggestions works for me.)

Let's assume trout are feeding on a floating insect. Silhouette (say up- or down-wing) and size are easy to see by catching a natural insect. If the wings poke into the air perpendicular to the body and the insect -- including the tail -- measures 7/8 inches long, then the imitation should have up-wings and the fly length should equal 7/8 inches long.

For deciding color, fly rodders should ask the same list of questions for consistency: What color are the wings? Tails? Legs? Thorax? Abdomen? Let's say the wings, tails and legs are medium, smoky gray and the abdomen and thorax are medium olive. If that's the case, then a Blue-Winged Olive dry fly with the same gray wings, tails and legs and with a medium olive body would do the trick. When deciding color, you must pick the fly apart with those five questions to get the match right.

Going beyond the general approach and learning specific genus and species by the Latin name make a huge difference at times, and a quick anecdote says it best:

For 30 years, from late July through September, a size 20 blue-winged-olive mayfly hatches on a central Maine river, beginning at10 a.m. and ending shortly after noon. The hatch is as consistent and dependable as death and taxes, and I look at this annual, daily emergence like an old friend.

For 25 years, I never took the time to identify the genus or species because matching the natural to an imitation in size, color and silhouette led to instant success. In short, there was no need to go further with the ID.

However, one feature of the hatch puzzled me. If I fished a dead-drifted, blue-winged-olive nymph for 30 minutes before the hatch, I seldom caught trout. It wasn't the end of the free world as I knew it, but the lack of pre-hatch action confused me because most insects offered this bonus. They move around prior to emergence, and the current washes them downstream to waiting trout maws.

One day five years ago, Mike Holt, owner of Fly Fishing Only in Fairfield, was talking to me about a blue-winged-olive hatch on the Shawmut stretch of the Kennebec, which coincided with my river's blue-winged olives. In the discussion, he said the word "Baetis," and it was like trumpets blared from heaven and bright lights flashed across the sky.

For all those years prior to the discussion with Holt, I had assumed my home-river, blue-winged-olive hatch was in the Ephemerella genus, a crawling mayfly that you match by dead-drifting nymphs to imitate ones floating downstream in the current. However, flies in the Baetis genus are really swimming mayflies imitated by casting a nymph quartering across and downstream and working the larva imitation back an inch at a time against the current. That one word, Baetis, solved the riddle as to why I never caught fish on a dead-drift prior to this hatch.

Multiply this story by dozens more and you begin to see why taking the time to identify bugs scientifically helps catch fish. It shows the fly rodder how to fish a nymph without actually scuba-diving to figure out how to duplicate the submerged nymph's behavior. Entomology books tell us all this neat info.

I cannot leave this topic without mentioning a quick point. No one I have ever met who has taken the time to learn how to identify flies has told me that it was a waste of time. The only ones who ever pooh-pooh the Latin approach are the ones who don't know how to do it. If you have the interest, learning the science will make you more successful. If you have no yearning to deal with Latin, the general, commonsense approach is all you need to keep the good times rolling.

The choice is yours.

Ken Allen, of Belgrade Lakes, is a writer, editor and photographer. E-mail: kallyn800@aol.com