No Bugs?, Siphlonurus sunken Impressions- lethal wet swinging when no spinners fall

(my Gray Drake Super Submersible- lethal swinging when nothing is happening!- great for all banded-bodied/segmented mayflies/drakes)

How many nights or mornings ( drakes BTW spinner fall at both times) have you driven to the stream or walked down from your cabin/lodge saying... " tonight/this morning will be the one!- the hatch /spinner fall will happen and I will get my 20 inch brown for sure!..And?, the weather turned crap; too much wind, too hot or too cold, started to rain etc. With climate change's ups-and-downs  it's always something and nothing happened, or worst yet bugs came out but didn't fall- sucks right?- here is the solution.

Once the gray/green/brown drakes start to hatch and emerge will easily last for a few weeks (siphlonurus drakes on my Muskegon and Pere Marquette, East and West Coast  waters along with other Baltic/Scandinavian country hatches) and up to 4-6 weeks on cool damp springs. the selective trout get quite imprinted to barred and banded mayfly adults, spinners and the nymphs. Unlike other drakes that emerge from the surface, Gray Drakes swim to shore during dusk and thru the night to hatch on damp wooded debris and grass along the shorelines, only to come back to the rivers surface at dusk and dawn to spin/mate and lay eggs. That is when the football splash-like surface explosions occur. Drakes couple in the air and drop quickly to the surface and often leave airborne several times, thus they can be tough to grab for a trout until fully spent which sums up their robust rises.

( Early morning fat truttasaurus spinner sipper while others were still sleeping from going to bed late and fish-less, chasing the midnight spinner fall that often yields tough returns)

But many nights there are tons of "bug karma/sex synergy" of mating swarms in the air but no coupling occurs due to cold air coming in quickly, too hot and sunny etc.- its a real tough one to hit it just right! Hunting this hatch for 30 years I've come to at least 80% accuracy in my predicting this "prime-time" to be on the water, but that 20% inaccuracy is getting bigger, again with the uncertain weather patterns and water conditions of climate change that even has the bugs confused as much as us.

When the hatches are thick for weeks like on the Muskegon. the surface will be carpeted in drakes like sawdust clumps and often make imitations useless. The bigger selective trout imprint to this food form and also target the shorelines where they emerge. Also due to the density of this hatch, many spinners sink and get water logged. They become very appealing due to their sheer numbers.

When nothing is happening on the surface, my "Super Submersible" pattern will bring rod-jolting strikes in the middle of the day since it imitates the migrating nymph and sunk spinner, plus soft- hackle swingers will love to swing these.

 I use a long Thomas & Thomas 12ft /3 in./3 weight-Contact model, which lets you feel the fly and swing in an unparalleled manner through technology that didn't exist years ago, coupled with my Abel. 

Good luck! 
Matt Supinski

FLY RECIPE
Hook: Daiichi 1260
Thread: Uni-Black-3/0
Tail and Body: Nice thick Hareline Gadwell Duck feather nicely barred, planted with tail and center of feather situated flat on hook as you Palmer the black thread around the feather in a uniformed banded distance covering length and circumference around hook
Thorax: Hareline UV Peacock Ice Dub
Wing: Pearl Krystal Flash
Hackle: Hungarian Partridge
Bead: Black Tungsten 

Get more in-depth with this subject and more in my books!

Posted in: gray drake lodge , Matt Supinski Brown Trout-Atlantic Salmon Nexus book , may fly hatches , mayflies of Michigan , muskegon river fly fishing , Selectivity book , siphlonurus gray drakes