Mother’s Day Caddis
I remember being half out of my wits in Montana’s Gallatin Valley when I decided to quit my job and go fishing. I was getting a lot of time on the water, but there were some important events I’d been missing, including an early season Rocky Mountain caddis blitz that seemed beyond accurate description. When trout bums boasted of the hatch, the superlatives flowed from their mouths.
“Absolutely the best dry-fly fishing of the year,” one confidant said.
“Pure carnage,” another promised. “Billions of bugs stacked one atop the other, fish gorging, and hardly anyone on the water.”
One early May afternoon I was on a stool at Stacy’s Bar in Gallatin Gateway, Montana, trying to forget about working, when I spied a rail-thin guide sitting across the horseshoe bar. This guy never looked good, but now he appeared totally spent, with purple lines under his eyes and greasy hair falling from a sweat-soaked and fly-laden ball cap.
I wanted to ask how long he’d survived on tomato soup and Budweiser, but instead I managed, “Is the caddis hatch coming off?”
He lifted a whiskey and said: “Look at me. I’ve fished until after dark for a week straight. My clients are having a heyday and I’m getting run ragged. Be on the Madison tomorrow at 4 P.M.”
I left a tip on the counter, a two-beer credit for the guide, and headed to my tying table. The following day, flush with fish fever, I quit my job and waded into a caddisfly frenzy on the Madison River. Insects clung to my waders, crawled in and around my ears, wiggled behind my sunglasses, and slithered down the nape of my neck. Wind gusts blew the caddis against my waders with a sound reminiscent of hard rain hitting pavement.
My view of the far bank was partially blurred by the swarm, and mats of caddis, which looked like chunks of carpet, floated downstream. I inhaled through my nostrils to avoid choking, and watched fish rising with enthusiasm, gorging on the largest flies they had seen since the previous summer. I twisted an Emergent Sparkle Pupa to the end of a 5X tippet and decided that all the stories attached to the Mother’s Day caddis hatch were as accurate as they could be. Never had I seen such a hatch.
Mother’s Day Caddis
The caddis I saw on the Madison are Brachycentrus occidentalis, sometimes called early Grannom caddis, but also known as Mother’s Day caddis. The pre-runoff Mother’s Day caddis hatch is a well-known event in the trout-rich states of Montana and Colorado, but it also occurs on Washington’s Yakima River as well as on many rivers in Idaho, Wyoming, Oregon, and California.
Although called the Mother’s Day hatch, the hatch begins in mid-April on most streams, often just before runoff, and lasts a few weeks. On lower-elevation rivers where the hatch starts early—such as the Yellowstone near Livingston, Montana, or the Colorado River near Glenwood Springs, Colorado—the hatch is usually winding down by Mother’s Day. In higher-elevation streams the hatch is sometimes true to its name and is still going strong on Mother’s Day and through the middle of May.
In the Rockies, look for intense Mother’s Day caddis hatches on the Madison, Yellowstone, Big Hole, Beaverhead, Ruby, Rio Grande, Arkansas, Colorado, Animas, and Roaring Fork rivers. The hatch may not be as dense on some other waters, but Brachycentrus occidentalis is an important caddis species on almost every trout stream in the West and it pays to carry caddis patterns anywhere you fish during April and May. Many large Western rivers remain open all year for catch-and-release fishing but some rivers and many tributaries are closed until the general fishing season opens. Check your state regulations before fishing.
Because the hatch arrives early in the season—before tourist season but also before runoff—it can be hit-or-miss for dry-fly anglers. To find the best fishing, plan your trip to coincide with the warming trends of spring. The caddis hatch is at least partly triggered by warming water temperatures, but if the weather becomes too warm the rivers quickly rise with spring runoff and become tendrils of mud.
Local anglers, who can monitor conditions closely and fish during optimum conditions, know the hatch is not only viable, it’s the highlight of the pre-runoff season. Traveling anglers, however, face the fickle weather of springtime in the Rockies and must accept what comes their way. You can plan your trip to find heavy caddis hatches easily enough but water conditions are less predictable. Rivers can blow out overnight during spring due to rain or snowmelt but if you are flexible, you can sometimes still find a caddis hatch, and decent water conditions, farther upstream or in a nearby watershed.
For those who hit it just right, the spring caddis blitz is a memorable experience with trout that are totally committed to deliberate surface feeding. On good days, trout numbers mount as the teeth of multiple fish shred Trudes, Elk-hairs, and Sparkle Pupas.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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