Fishing Tricos

Tricos feed more than just fish and birds. Spiders also fill their caloric needs by catching wayward bugs.

In my youth I worked at a summer camp in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. The camp session ended on August 15th each year and I was among a handful of counselors who stuck around for a few extra days to close down the grounds for the coming winter. The workdays were long but enjoyable. Where days before the camp was bustling with activity, the grounds were now quiet except for the sounds of hammers swinging, lawn mowers making one last cut as well as the grunts that accompanied manual labor. At days end, Lake Winnipesauke called for a cooling dip as the smell of something being grilled wafted through the air.

After a full day's work a few beers appeared as we sat around the campfire discussing plans for the fall ahead. Most of us were college bound in a couple weeks' time. The cool nights confirmed that while fall lay a month away, the heat of summer was a rapidly fading memory.

For me, one other certainty lay ahead. I was in possession of the extra family car for a week, the one my home bound sister had access to all summer. With camp duties completed that meant only one thing: a dash across New Hampshire and Vermont for a few nights' car camping at Camping on the Battenkill in Arlington. The goal: chase the famous Trico hatch that I had read about in books and magazines.

The late, great Dan Collins and me with two hats of questionable taste. As an aside, the pool in the backgroud was a favorite of angling writer Nick Lyons (no relation).

Despite my inexperience, I managed to catch a trout or two on each outing. More often than not I did the trip on my own, but one year I coaxed my friend Dan Collins to make the trek and give fly fishing a try. The first time we did this he agreed to meet me later in the day as he had some chores that needed his attention. Later in the day turned out to be somewhere around 2 am the next morning as the combination of fog created by an exceptionally cold night (into the mid 30's in August) and perhaps one or two more Budweiser's than was advisable found him driving up and down Rte. 7A trying to find the campground! The next morning, he waded into the hallowed Battenkill without waders in water that was just a little over 50 degrees. He woke up quickly.

Those early trips have instilled in me a sense of nostalgia and a bit of romanticism that I have still not shaken. To this day, I get excited every morning I get up to face the "trikes". Sadly, my friend Dan has passed on, but the time is now spent with my wife Deanna and "Team Trico" has been formed.

I have written about Trico fishing on this blog in the past and after a good summer of Trico fishing this year, I'd like to revisit what I continue to learn about this omnipresent bug that brings equal parts joy and frustration for those who love being on a trout stream on a summer morning. I would encourage the reader to check out my previous post about Trico fishing as a primer for what I will offer below as I hope not to repeat myself or at least make refinements to previous observations.

Because I find that many folks are not acutely attuned to how weather impacts little mayflies, let's start with some bug forecasting. Nothing says more about the chance of success than the prevailing weather conditions on a given day. In short, the bugs appear over the same sections of river day after day, week after week. Though the bugs assuredly make an appearance that does not mean they will find themselves on the river in sufficient numbers to garner the attention of trout every single day.

It has been noted by many writers that the Trico spinners begin to fall when the air temperature hits 68 degrees. What needs to be emphasized is that the 68-degree temp mark (which I first read about in the print edition of the Orvis News) is more of a guideline than a hard fact. In reality, if air temps stall at 68 to 70 degrees on an August or early September morning the bugs will only fall slowly. The day will be a disappointment. Later season spinner falls, which will occur when the day is at its warmest. The day may never reach 68 degrees. The bugs seem to adjust with the season.

The best way for me to describe what a good Trico day feels like during the prime period of activity from July until about Labor Day is this: you will arrive on the river, and it will be a little cool. You might even have on a light extra layer. The day will warm to the magic 68-degree mark by 10 or 10:30 a.m. and continue warming into the 70's on up to 80 degrees. After a solid hour to 90 minutes of casting to rising trout, you will depart the river a bit warm. Perhaps even with a bead or two of sweat falling. On those hot July and August days you will arrive on the river early. The bugs will fall quickly, and it could all be over in a frenetic half hour or so.

One of the biggest challenges associated with Trico is the hook sizes needed to imitate the naturals. If you don't tie your own flies the following will not help and you can skip ahead, but if you do tie, read on. In my early days of tying I used a pretty standard hook with a turned down eye and a normal hook gape. As you might expect, these hooks did not provide confidence that a good hook set would result in a solid connection. Misses were common. Over the years a variety of hooks have come out with wider gapes and straight eyes to provide better hooking ability. The problem of threading the fly was also addressed with the advent of large eyed hooks. These were improvements, but not what I would call monumental ones.

Earlier this year I stumbled across an article about Trico's written by author and guide Matt Supinski in his Hallowedwaters.com site. The article, titled Dances with Trico's - The White Curse Demystified is an excellent primer on our title subject. Matt references a "have to have" hook for successful Trico fishing, the Daiichi 1140 in a size 18. This is a scud hook with slightly turned up eye and a very wide gape. The hook is also slightly offset from the center. Supinski notes that the hook is a nod to the Partridge hooks that were once made for Vincent Marinaro. While the two hooks are markedly different, the off-center hook definitely has its roots in Marinaro's old Partridge made hooks (still available if you search Ebay).

A variety of hooks used for tying small dries. The late Vince Marinaro introduced the angling world to Trico fishing ("The Hidden Hatch") and his book In the Ring of the Rise is a must have. He designed a midge hook with an offset hook for tying the tiny flies (including Tricos) that were needed for success on his famous Le Tort Spring Run. The Daiichi 1140 that I now use is on the bottom. Note that Marinaro erroneously referred to the Trico as a Caenis.

My first use of these hooks came this year when I fished the Jungle section of the Battenkill with my wife Deanna. Fish were rising in a nice little riffle, and I tossed out a cast to show Anna how to get a good drift along the seam that separated the quite water where the fish held from the conveyor belt of the quick water that was bringing Trico's to the fish. As luck would have it, a fish took, and my strike was true. I cannot say I would have connected with that fish with any other hook I had previously been using. In fact, only the week before, I missed numerous strikes to fish that I should have caught. While I was duly impressed with the hook, my angling partner was a little less impressed with my demonstration and reminded me that she would have been happy to catch that particular brook trout.

Note the wide gape on these hooks, the Daiichi 1140 in a size 18. Perfect for imitating a Trico in a traditional size 22. Note that both flies are sparse. Commercial ties often have too much material. They may look better in hand, but they don't fish better on the stream.

With the use of this hook, I have become more confident that the hook will find itself in the jaw of the trout, but I was still missing too many strikes. And this brings me to another important lesson. I generally like to cast down and across to the trout rising for Trico's. The fly shows first. On a good day takes can be frequent. However, even with the wider gape hooks, I realized that how I set the hook had to be adjusted. In my excitement of getting a take, too often I would strike up and essentially yank the fly away from the trout.

For the correction to this malady I must again thank Mr. Supinski. He made the point of explaining that the best way to hook a fish is to keep the rod low and set by sweeping the rod to the right or left of where the fish is holding, basically at a 90 degree angle to the head of the target fish. This motion puts the fly securely in the jaw of the trout. With a wider gape hook and this hook setting motion I have really begun to put it together. I've had some good days.

Another bit of learning I have made this summer is that water levels will definitely dictate where the fish will hold. This seems obvious enough but being in the midst of a very dry summer, water levels have decreased significantly. Much more than normal. There are places on the 'kill (and I am sure other streams) that provided great action in July and early August that have been abandoned by trout because the water has become too shallow. This has forced me to learn new pieces of water. If the bugs are good and you are not seeing fish where you normally do, it is time to explore. I now have a small handful of stretches of river that I can rely on during periods of unusually low water.

An additional point to be made is that as we transition away from summer and into fall like conditions the number of quality Trico mornings will diminish. You have to become more discriminating about when to head to the river for a Trico morning. A day or two in September that revert to August like conditions are the days I like to target. And if there is some humidity in the air on those days, I will also be looking for flying ants later in the day.

As the waters begin to chill, the fish will become more aggressive. Brook trout can be quite feisty when water temps drop back down into the 50's. They definitely begin to punch above their weight and also begin to take on fall colors. For that reason alone I really enjoy those special September mornings

What fly angler isn't going to get a little excited when tricos begin to dance above their selected pieces of water knowing that a rise of trout will soon follow.

Though summer is rapidly ebbing I have not given up hope of squeezing out another morning or two of Trico fishing. The 10-day forecast suggests there will be some good opportunities ahead. Forty-some-odd years on I still get up early with a sense of anticipation as I drive to the river. The valley is quiet as the fog begins to lift, and tiny specs can be seen dancing above the same riffles where I first began chasing tricos. Soon enough there will be a rise. I am transported back to my youth as I step into the water, a little wiser perhaps, yet no less enthusiastic.