Keep Your Eyes On The Prize, Hold On.

 This one is sure to stir up controversy and dissenting opinions, but I believe I'm more right than wrong. 

To begin with, trout like an easy meal and what is easier to do than to get in a spot where mayfly duns are floating along in soft current and sip them as they drift by. Trout do this the first few days at the start of every species of mayfly that hatches. If you are lucky enough to be in the water on one of those days and see the noses coming out of the water as they eat duns one after another you can become, for an hour or so, the fisherman you've dreamed of being, but, with the pressure that is put on the Delaware River trout, the "dun sipping" phase of a hatch is over almost before it has begun.

As soon as a fish has been hooked on a mayfly dun, (this probably varies from fish to fish, some need to be caught eating duns more than once), he starts to concentrate on eating the nymphs as they swim up from the bottom. It's harder work and requires the expenditure of more energy, but they receive positive reinforcement because they are rarely hooked. Why? Because it's difficult to impossible, (for me anyway), to duplicate the movement of a nymph coming up from the bottom to hatch. When you see splashy rises or boils, what you are witnessing is a fish turning around after he has eaten a nymph in the water column. 

Why is it so hard to catch these fish? Because whether you are fishing a mayfly dun, an emerger, or Ed S's still born dun, you, as a dry fly fisherman are placing your fly on the surface and the fish aren't looking there. They are looking down in the water column for a nymph that's just starting it's journey to the surface.

Being obsessed with what the fish are eating is what we fishermen do. Back when every fisherman's goal was to put 10 hatchery fish in his creel, I cleaned a lot of fish and believe me they ate everything from worms, to floating red berries, to filter tips from discarded cigarettes. Not once did I ever examine the stomach and esophagus of a fish and find it was only eating emergers, or even just one species of mayfly for that matter. With the decrease in the number of smokers today, finding a filter tip in a fish's gullet might be a rarity, but I bet some of the smaller strike indicators surely end up there.  

What's a fisherman to do?  Look for the fish that is sticking his nose out of the water sipping duns along the bank somewhere, he's either stupid and easily caught, or smart, knows the game and is the ultimate challenge for a dry fly fisherman, (I tipped my hat to one on Sunday). Every once in a while during a hatch, (think the red barn), a fish will just get an urge to eat a dun and if your fly is in the water you have a chance. Also late in the hatch when the bugs start to wane, (a wain for those of you who didn't know, is a large heavy farm wagon), trout that are still hungry often resort to eating a few duns, be ready. And if you don't have a long ride home, wait for the spinner fall, if the trout wants to eat a late dinner of spinners he has to look up. 

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