Eastern Green Drake

[culrich6 0]

With still being a newbie to fly fishing and tying and after hearing from others how tough the green drake hatch can be on the Penns Creek in PA, I decided I would try my luck anyway. The hatch was absolutely amazing and the action was unreal. Fish rising left and right and drakes so thick it looked like it was snowing. I did manage to land one nice brown and miss quite a few. After seeing the size of these bugs i decided to try to replicate one with the few materials I have, so here is my attempt at an extended body green drake. I won't get to fish it till next year since the hatch will be over before I can get to the creek again. The second photo is one of the large drakes I took while fishing.

[Philly 0]

Looks good. You might think about tying it as an emerger/cripple and as a spinner. I've only run into two Green Drake hatches one on Pine Creek and one on a river in Vermont. Both times the hatches were overwhelmed by hatches of smaller insects. Pine Creek by a hatch of minuscule white mayflies, size 20, that looked like a fine snow rising off the river. Never have properly identified what it was. In Vermont there was a huge caddis hatch going on at the same time, and the fish seemed focused on the caddis. The the drakes in Vermont rather than having a the white body, had a light green body which got me into a lot of arguments with the guys I was fishing with on Pine Creek.

[culrich6 0]

Philly thanks..I am definitely going to tie up spinners for next year...the fish were hitting them hard right at dark. I think I may have got lucky as well because there were a few other smaller mayflies hatching but not in the numbers the drakes were hatching and with the size of the bugs you could tell what they were hitting on. I have another picture of a drake that has almost a yellowish color to the body .it was definitely a fun experience and being new to the sport I had a tough time getting rising fish to hit my fly...I don't quite have the presentation down yet.