Who Ate All The Caddis???
It’s been a funny old spring for an angler on the Arkansas. The usual rules of engagement haven’t been observed. What, you may enquire, are the usual rules? Well, they’re the ones where around the beginning of April the weather starts to warm consistently. River levels remain low and constant. The increased sunlight warms the water and the riverbed itself. Once the water temperature reaches around 54 degrees, millions of little bugs called caddis flies hatch. These caddis are feasted on by fish and fowl, and indirectly by fishermen, who descend on the river in equally impressive numbers to catch the fish that are catching the caddis.
But this time around, someone rewrote the script. The weather patterns have been all over the place – one day warm and in the 70s, the next snowy and 30. The river level has been rising steadily, making it harder for the suns rays to do their thing. Consequently, over the past month, scarcely a caddis had been seen. Which begs the question – where are the little buggers?
I’ve been on the river most days this past month, and have seen one day when there were caddis hatching in decent numbers, and fish feeding on them. Here we go, I thought, even proudly posting on Facebook that the hatch was underway. Since then, barely a thing. The odd caddis skittering about in the wind, the odd fish munching on one. In years gone by, they have hatched in incredible numbers, millions rising from the surface of the river like snow flakes in reverse. There is little you can do in such situations but pull the boat over to the side of the river and marvel at nature’s bounty and intricacy.
All this is not to say that the fishing, per se, has been lousy. Quite the contrary. The odd day excepted, the fishing has been consistently good. If your aim was to catch a fish on a dry fly, however, you may be disappointed. Which is your problem, and yours alone. Its a reminder that ultimately, each day we take what the river gives us.
But I still would like to know: what has happened to the caddis? Are they going to hatch later? Were last years males all firing blanks? Have they been taken up in some kind of heavenly insect rapture? Even the swallows seem to be in on the act. Usually, this time of the year, their nests under bridges are teaming with life and new hatchlings. So far, they have been strangely empty, as if they know something we don’t.
So from now on, when people ask me what’s going on, after this spring, I’m just going to shrug. Don’t ask me, I’m only a human.
It’s Blue-Wing time on the Arkansas
Coming up in a few weeks, the Ark will be in the midst of one of the most renowned dry fly hatches in the West – the Mother’s Day caddis hatch. But right now there is another, less spectacular, but no less enjoyable hatch going on – the early spring blue-winged olive hatch.
Blue-wings are mayflies, and make up the second most important part of an Arkansas River trout’s diet, after caddis. Up close, blue-wings are a beautiful insect, delicate and short-lived. While some species may live for up to a year subsurface as nymphs, once they hatch into adults, the clock is ticking. The adult has no mouth parts with which to eat and sustain itself, so their life span in usually little more than twenty four hours. As you might imagine, they are on a mission.
That mission is to find a mate, do the business and lay eggs back in the river for the next generation before departing this mortal coil. There is no time for drawn out courtship rituals here – think spring break at Cancun or Ibiza.
Generally, blue-wings prefer to hatch on cooler, cloudy days. Once breaking through the surface film, they have to wait anywhere from thirty seconds to a few minutes while their wings inflate and dry out. It is at this time that they are most vulnerable, and as they hatch and float helplessly down the river, trout will line up along the foam lines and eddy lines to languidly sip them down.
Lately, we haven’t been having enough cooler, cloudy days, but they have been hatching anyway – when you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go, I guess. On this day that Caveman, Pinky and I floated, we had what you would call a typical blue wing kind of day. In the morning, small nymphs were working best, like pheasant tails and juju baetis. Once the adult blue-wings started to appear on the surface, we switched to dry flies and had a great couple of hours of top water action.
I’d also like to add that anyone can catch a trout on this river. It takes real skill and technique, however, to hook a sucker fish, let alone hook it in the tail. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.