Grey Drake lifecycle

[Guest]

I finally got started on the grey drake series.

 

Here's the nymph

 

 

It's tied with homemade dubbing (fur) and heavily weighted in the thorax to give it a jigging action. According to sources they are very fast swimmers, much like iso's. Unfortunatly my camera somewhat distorted the coloration, but the abdomen is a solid grey with a fine silver rib and the thorax a greyish brown.

 

Stay tuned for the emerger, cripple and spinner. I hope to complete it this weekend.

 

For those of you coming to the Muskegon outing, there's a good chance the skies will be filled with these.

[Guest]

Looking forward to seeing the rest of this Shoe. It's been a good spring on the Mo' so far.

 

Mike

 

 

[Joe Hard 0]

Nice fly, cant wait to see the rest of the life cycle. The map in the back ground, are those the bodies of water where you are going to fish?

[Guest]

It's been quite difficult to find information on them. Some sites mention the nymph crawling on to vegetation and taking flight from there. The origin of the nymph is where I've been getting mixed signals. According to one article it lives in swampy areas, yet another makes reference to "slack water" pockets within the river. We've always found blanket hatches near fast water. Pretty cool doing research though

 

I did have the pleasure of fishing the nymph this weekend and the results were pretty cool. It took several respectable trout and of course "the one that got away" was around the 17" mark...lol

 

I will concentrate my fishing efforts near shoreline brush, much like fishing hoppers later on the year, since this seems to be the key to their emergence. This might a situation where a cripple could come in handy.

 

Joe,

 

The map was just something to provide a backdrop and hide the disaster I call my bench

[Joe Hard 0]

How come only the big fish get away? I lost a huge brown last night. I guess thats what keeps us comming back.

[Guest]

Great info Ralf, can't wait to see the other stages

[Violator 0]

Buy the book "Hatches II" by Al Caucci and Bob Nastasi and it will tell you what you want to know.

 

My two personal favorite patterns for this critter are an emerger (grey dubbing, deer hair wing) fished dead drift in the surface film in slack water and a swimmer nymph fished on the swing in the faster riffle water. The latter is pretty cool as big trout (15-24" in my experience) will clear the water chasing it. This nymph will also imitate isonychias.

[Guest]

QUOTE (Violator @ May 20 2005, 08:23 AM)

a swimmer nymph fished on the swing in the faster riffle water.

Exactly!

 

It's kinda strange, since many of the nymphs I fish will take fish in the "hang", but not this one. After the swing it won't draw a hit.

 

Thanks for the info on the book. I will add it to my short list.