Have you ever wondered if a wintering fish longs for the warmer months of spring and their prolific hatches? Or do they simply live their lives day to day, as opportunists, slaves to instinct and the life cycles of insects? Having spent months nibbling on a diet of size 18 to 20 midges and Blue-Winged Olives, do they salivate thinking of the six-legged beefsteaks to come — the Green Drakes of May and June? I do.
The Green Drake hatches, occurring in conjunction with the colorful flowers and warm winds of spring, are among my favorites. It is rarer to be able to experience them, compared with the more easily timed hatches of the stoneflies. Green Drakes like inclement weather, storm clouds, thunder, and rain.
My first encounter and most memorable experience with this bug occurred while fishing with my friend Allen Bernard on the upper Sacramento River. We both worked at a Sacramento fly shop, and we were about to race out of the store to our car, which was loaded with gear and food for a two-day fishing trip, when I stopped and asked, “Allen, have you got any Green Drake patterns?” “No,” he said. “I never see those insects. They’re just a myth.” But I decided that we had better grab a few, because there was a chance of bad weather up in the Mount Shasta area.
I went over to the fly bins and picked out two of my favorite dry-fly imitations, one with a parachute deer hair extended body and the other my very favorite, a Quigley Cripple. This latter fly uses a size 10 hook, incorporating one to three marabou barbules tied in at the rear hook bend and extending backward, creating a short tail that imitates the nymphal shuck. The remaining marabou gets wrapped up the hook shank, creating the body’s feathery gills. A small ball of olive dubbing forms the thorax, then deer hair is tied over the top of the thorax and behind the eye, leaving the stiff hair tips protruding over the front of the eye. A hackle, wrapped parachute style, anchored at the base of the deer hair post, finishes it off. Whereas the parachute on the extended deer hair body of the dry fly suspends it flush in the surface film and parallel to the surface, the parachute angle of the Quigley Cripple causes the body of the fly to hang down diagonally, underneath the surface, with the post sticking out of the water like the wing of an emerging adult. This feathered concoction has served me well over the years.
Our fly boxes complete, we drove to Dunsmuir. The following morning, I rolled out of bed and peered out the window to see gray, threatening rainclouds covering the crown of Mount Shasta. Might we finally drift our flies among the “mythical” Green Drakes? We wolfed down our breakfast and drove to our favorite section of the upper Sac. In spite of there being no signs of any hatch, we cast attractor dries onto the shifting currents. A few fish rose to our offerings, only to turn away. But we are dry-fly fanatics, and we were happy. Then I felt it — a drop of cold rain splashed down the back of my neck. Soon, Allen and I were thoroughly drenched, but then, suddenly, the rain stopped, and out of the corner of my eye, upstream, I saw an olive sailboat drifting down in front of us, and then more of them. Allen turned to me, wide-eyed and smiling. Drakes! Like little kids receiving a long-awaited gift, we tore into our fly boxes and tied on a Quigley Cripple Green Drake.
Then it was easy. A big rainbow rose to my left. I cast. It ate. I set . . . and broke him off. As fast as I could tie one on, a new emerger sailed back into the drift. Another big ’bow instantly inhaled my fly. Set! It jumped again and again. As I stooped to net it, there was my broken off-fly in the other corner of its mouth. That memory still brings a big smile to my gray beard.
—Andy Guibord
